


Waking Up

by Luukiead



Category: In the Flesh (TV), Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Blood and Gore, Consent is a thing, Crossover, F/M, Guns, Homophobic Language, Injections, M/M, Mentions of Necrophilia, Needles, Non-Binary Hange Zoë, PTSD, Partially Deceased Syndrome, Rape/Non-con Elements, Real Settings included, Self-Harm, SnK and ITF fusion, SnK characters in the ITF universe, Trans Male Character, dubious necrophilia, flash backs, im tagging this due to relationships between the living and PDS
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-06 14:00:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 71,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1860648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luukiead/pseuds/Luukiead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Rising has brought them back; family and friends and neighbours and strangers pawing their way into the world of the living, claiming the sun and the air as their own, feasting on those who can no longer fight.</p><p> <em>Now we can treat them. They are Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferers, and it is not their fault.</em></p><p> (Attack on Titan characters in the In The Flesh universe. Fic covers points which have not yet been covered in the ITF series, and so may actually not be canon, just to let you know.)</p><p>In Layman's terms, Marco is a conscious zombie, and Jean is a douchebag.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them on the last day."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Listen- [(Woodkid- Run Boy Run)](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6uEWkR9NUT4)
> 
>  
> 
> _Tomorrow is another day,_  
>  _And you won't have to hide away._  
>  _You'll be a man, boy._  
>  _But for now it's time to run, it's time to run!_

_"...CAN'T DO THAT, IT'S GOING TO..."_

_"Don't tell me that, I k-"_

_"...But it might kill him."_

_"...Trying to find... do it Bert. If it doesn't work we'll just write it off as another... statistics won't drop."_

_"Okay."_

_"We trust you."_

 

 

 

 

The immediate disgorge of haemoglobin red sears him, burns through his skull and renders him immobile as every muscle spasms wildly. He arches in visceral pain, eyes rolling back into his head to try and wash away the globulating gelatinous entrails from the back of his lids, the light piercing through and lightening the berberis spray. There isn’t much for him to think of, only the way he had once torn through clothes and skin with every uncontrollable scratch, peeling rare meat into the palm of his hand to feel it's dripping warmth in the last dregs of life as he sat between the final few humming heartbeats of his victory, and bringing the fallen petals of the withering prey to his mouth to satiate a merciless primal urge before even knowing what he had done.

What had he done… before _that_? Before this? All there is to think of is the way the curdling blood had churned with the force of unfeeling fingers as they kept going- kept grappling and gripping and tearing as he let himself go and gloried in the royalty of his kill with every superbly heightened fibre of his being. This is him now, and he was bred to be something unlike anything he had ever known. The dark blank of his mind let him carry on doing what his body told him to do; it told him to kill, and he did just that. He had destroyed someone and let himself eat that poor person, that tiny cadaver of once breathing and laughing life that had been like himself so long ago.

Only, he had not thought like that in a long time. Never was there a time in the endless lake of wandering tranquillity he truly remembered what he did or how he felt about the impending repercussions of his actions. But now it clutters around him and crashes through the dripping fog like tumbling and heavy rocks, like leaves slicing through the air as they clipped from the outstretched arms that once gave them life and settled to the ground to rot far from the protective comfort of floating shadows. Only until now does he see it for what it is, and it makes him sick to his stomach. It burns his throat, acidic and wrong, the utter horror of its translation churning with every twinge of his bowed spine and guttural rattle tearing through his throat.

He focuses on that. He focuses on the way it felt like the air burnt with the choking scent of sulphur, cloying his airways. It amalgamates in his gullet and keeps him from taking the gulp he needs, lining his lungs with molten lead until he is drowning in the sounds of his own dying breath, the swirl of bitter air twinging the tiny rasps he takes through his mouth and nose. The weight on him is heavy and he can barely fight against it, every moment feeling that bit less able to push against the downward tug of a heavy heart. There is no way to fight it off as he had once chosen to do. He can’t stretch his arms to the powerful force and hold it away, to keep himself safe and fed by clawing and striking at the breaking pressure. This is all him now, and he is powerless to do anything but collide his back to the faint damp of something unreasonably yielding as he lets himself sink through sheer force, gasping through the fire that he can feel rising within him, and eventually coming to the hazy yet horrifying realisation that he has been tied down.

It was only then he realises he’s going to be sick.

He flips himself over as far as he can, the cold vomit rising with a freezing burn through his oesophagus and into his mouth, some dripping through into his nose and exploding unpleasantly. He can feel the way thick chunks of rotting cadaver expel itself next to wherever he is lying, and it almost pleases him that he can feel it leaving. He thinks that it is like this whole thing is being rewound. It makes him feel like the whole memory had been a bad dream and only now is he realising that the vicious nightmares are part of some unholy bug he has caught. The sickly chunks are only worth being left behind- a horrible memory of something beyond all human comprehension.

“It’s okay, sonny. Let it out.” A voice calls calmly from a distance, and yet he can tell it’s unnerved. Perhaps whoever this is doesn’t do well with ill people, he muses. But then again, this isn’t a voice he recognises as someone he knows, someone who he knows well enough to connect the voice with that fact- or even a face. The voice isn’t that of family, but a stranger; male and deep and lathered in concern. And if he was ill with this imaginary-delirium ensuing virus, then perhaps they were a medical professional. “It’s okay, don’t worry.” It calls again, proceeding to get closer, the sounds of footsteps springing from several directions.

There isn’t just one person. He can trace four sets of muffled footfall, each one coming from somewhere different. Yet he is too weak to track even one. Instead he snorts the throw-up from his nose- it smells like ash and rotten meat- as a skid of a shoe sliding from a corner makes him jump and scrunch his eyes so tightly that he slips further towards the ultimate blackness, hoping it will all disappear if he can fall back into oblivion he has awoken from.

He whips himself around, still unwilling to let himself get over the comforting blanket of darkness he is swaddling himself in. His left arm is stretched tight, wrist pulling firmly, and without thinking he relaxes himself towards it to ease the pressure. The right isn’t so bad, he realises, probably because that was the side he expunged himself unto, so he is inclined to lean that way anyway.

“What’s your name?” The voice returns and his head begins following it to the foot of the bed. It’s stronger now, authoritative and without the previous hesitation it had contained. Now it was almost flat, perhaps slightly breathy, but firm and without give. It wants an answer he’s not sure he can muster, the only sound to pass his throat a high whine through pursed lips.

He inhales, trying the same thing again. It feels right to start this way, and he allows himself that continuation, trying over and over to say whatever his mind had decided to start himself off with.

“What is your name?” this time the voice is harsher and it rises in volume, and he shifts himself backwards. He hears the shuffling of feet, and perhaps the clang of metal both coming from the way he pulls his hands against the restraints and from the people standing around him. It spooks him and he writhes on the bed, trying over and over to spill the syllables he wants to remember, yet every time he does all he can think of is the sulphur in the air and the way his lungs could take in nothing other than the vile stench of death. He remembers that every time the hum begins vibrating into the air around him like the engine of a generator, sparking an energy that shifts the people and makes the sharp break of hinges slipping in and out of interlocking plates rise with every new moment. He can tell there are clicks, followed by the soft ping of tiny scraps falling to the floor before rolling.

They have guns, and they are pointing them at him. They are ready to aim, to try and kill. Unless he says his name, the one he can, no, he knows is there, sitting on the tip of the tongue as it pushes into the back of his lips. He wishes he could scream- he wants to do nothing but cry into the ground and let the darkness consume him. He wishes he has the power to open his eyes and look at the people who points such disgusting weapons at him.

“If you do not say your name now, we will be forced to shoot. Do you understand.”

He nods at their demanding shout, hoping they know that he doesn’t want to die. He tries so hard, forcing it out. So desperate. So cold.

"Annie I think we sho-"

“HMmmmmmmmmarco!" He eventually calls. There’s a sigh, and he thinks it is from his own lips, the ones that feel slick with his own ebony bile. “I…I’m-m Marco," he confirms, and it feels so reassuring to hear his own name settling through the mist of rotting images forced onto the backs of his eyelids.

The steps come closer, the sound of metal being dropped loud and almost drowning the inexorable sigh that filtered from every direction. “Okay, okay Marco… good. Do you have a sirname?”

“Bodt, I think.” The words fly out so easily now. It is like his mouth had been sown his mouth shut, only now breaking the stitches that had stopped him from saying exactly what he wanted to. His tongue feels slimy still, but it doesn’t matter to him, not now that he can feel the sweet rush of air burn through his mouth and open his lungs back up, each breath shaky but still refreshingly perfect. His mustiness disappeared and now he was airing himself out once again. Yet his eyes didn’t open. “Um… m-my eyes?”

Footsteps move closer and stand almost directly above Marco, and he turns to follow them. “Oh, yeah, course. We taped yer eye shu’ before treatmen’ t’ calm yer down. I must admi’ we’ere worried tha’ a’yer stage we coul’n’ bring ya back.” This voice is smoother in its tone despite the boast of a heavy accent, (a typical Jack-the-Lad smile flashing up in Marco’s head) and it is somewhat more jovial than before the one before, although in a smug sort of way. “D’yer wan’ me te take et orf?”

“If y’could. Thanks.” He isn’t sure if he could smile, but he wants to. The gesture is so small, get seeming so significant to Marco. A deep chuckle sounds to his left.

“Get’ennother Irish-en, Bert. Where yer from, Marco?” The tape is slowly easing away, pulling at his skin and eyelashes. He can feel the pulsating heat of thick fingers as they rest on his cheek to help pry away the gauze.

Marco doesn’t even have to think before he responds. The shock of earlier has disappeared and now he feels completely refreshed, renewed and ready to talk someone’s ear off. “Kilkenny. Me Mam has a house in the shadow of the catherderal… or, well…”

She used to. Before it burnt down- with him inside.

The memory of pain. The cloying smell of fire.

“Shit. Annie get’a hol’.”

The tape rips away and Marco’s eye shoots open, and he suddenly realises that it is his only eye, the other half of his vision blurred into a known oblivion, fading away into the darkness of a nothing He knows is there. And he shakes again, limbs caught in a struggle to break free and curl into a ball, the sudden realisation that he was hurt, that his right arm was a tangled mess of stitches and that his right eye was gone and all he had was a dark hollow filled with nothing, half blind, half unseeing and unsightly. The three men and single woman crowded around the bed, each taking a flailing limb with another two hands pressing into his chest, the same leaded weight as before.

Tears threaten his eyes and yet none fall despite the raging cries and sobs that escape his throat as he remembers it all- how the charred beam had fallen and trapped his leg, his arm had been shredded by the expanding glass of the windows as they tore through the room and carved deep ribbons into his bleeding flesh, how one had hit his eye and -in a desperate fit to stop the pain- he had ripped it out, taking the bleeding orb and ocular nerve with it, the thing stuck into the jagged point as though it clung to the end in one triumphant flourish to death as spurting dark fluid that ran onto his fingers and stained them blue.

That was the thing he thinks had killed him in the end. Not the flames, not the beam which had him pinned to the ground. It was the pain that ripped through his skull and made him wail in hopeless agony as he cried and let himself be consumed by the absolute numbness of a sheer, sharp fall as the air filled with dense smoke and breathing became arduous. It was the way he lifted  his bloodied fingers to his eye and felt that there was nothing, that half his vision had been cut away in an instant, leaving in its place a terror so huge he couldn’t stand it any longer and he spluttered in pain to try and cry out one last time, only failing and slipping into the prickling darkness of a head filled with unbearable torture. 

He wishes he could feel the hot streaks of tears running down his face, because he is sure it would bring him comfort. Only nothing flows, just the remnants of vomit falling onto the sheets, its deep brown shade making the whole thing look too close to faeces for Marco’s liking, and he gags again, bringing up nothing but the bitter bubbling of distress, and the hands on his chest begin to relax, the only woman gently shushing him with burning fingers.

“Marco, you need to listen to me.” The voice was faint, yet he hears it and latches on, hoping that the instructive monotone is the thing that can pull him, kicking and screaming, from the pit where he had fallen, “you are a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer, and we have given you treatment to help stablise it. You are a Partially Deceased Synrome sufferer, and it is not your fault. What you did in your untreated state is not your fault, do you understand me Marco? You have to listen to what I’m saying… repeat that for me.”

“I’m dead…” he whispers, shaking his head and letting the cuffs strain against him. he should feel a cold burn, only there’s little. It is just metal against skin and nothing more, reminding him of what he is, of what happened to him. “I’m DEAD.” He screams, the woman flinching and the tall man’s eyes flying wide.

“You are not dead. You suffer from PDS, and you are not dead. It isn’t your fault. Just say that for me.”

He cannot bring himself to. He can only shake his head and mimic the visage of someone who is crying; face contorting into silent wails, wrecking sobs lurching through his body and force the hands to press his iron lungs. For the first time in a long time, he’s thinking again, and it hurts everywhere. Marco knows he shouldn’t be there. It makes him angry that they’ve tried, and they’ve ended up with something ungodly.

He is an abomination. What is his purpose?

“Marco, you need to repeat this. I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer.”

“I… no, no…” Marco’s mouth twitches downwards, half-vision blurred. His lower jaw shakes with tension- he lets it. “I can’t.”

The woman sighs, taking her hand from his chest and kneeling so Marco can see her properly through dry tears. Her face in impassive, yet there’s something so unbelievably alive about her, something he doesn’t have. “Just say it. If you don’t we have to shoot you, under the Non-Compliance act. So just say it.”

At that point he wonders if it is right just to stop and say nothing, because what would it do to try? Marco was gone- there was nothing left in a breathing world for someone who could never live and he saw no point. One of the men, a brutal-looking blond with fierce eyes and a deeply etched scowl- holds onto a handgun like it’s the only thing between him and a hungry tiger. Marco realises that this is for him; that scowl, that gun, the way the people hold onto him and talk to him like he is something mystical and horrifying. Every synapse is filled with the confliction between himself and them.

On one hand, this isn’t him. Marco Bodt died. Somewhere in the world is a grave with his name on it. Somewhere in the world was the house he died in, probably with someone else in now, but he still remembered the last few moments of unbelievable pain as he faded. He knew that was death, and yet he was here.

Something also tells him to fight. There is a wonderful urge to prevail, and they are giving him the final chance to do so, all he needs to do is say those few lines.

“I’m a… a Partially Deceased S- syndr-rome sufferer…”

The woman smiles lightly, nodding her head. The man begins to lower his gun and unfurl the knot of anger marring his forehead. “Good, Marco,” she starts, “and what I did in my untreated state is not my fault.”

Marco coughs lightly, tasting only rot and blood. He ignores it, and listens, “a-and what I did in my untreated state is… is… isn’t my fault.”

“Repeat that for me, Marco.” She says, the three men leaving the room as the woman pulls herself up next to the gurney and watches Marco as he talks.

“I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer. I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer.

My name is Marco Bodt and I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer."

 

 

 

 --

_I suffer from PDS and it is not my fault._

_Suffering from PDS is not my fault._

_I didn’t choose to contract PDS._

_It… do I have to do this? I don't need this. I need to go home, to see-_

_I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome Sufferer, and what I did in my untreated state is not… did I..._

_It isn’t my fault._

 

"My name is Marco and what I did in my untreated state is not my fault."

 

_What I did in my untreated state is not my fault._

_I didn’t choose this. It is not my fault._

 --

 

 

 

“My name is Marco Bodt. I died 23rd March 2009 in Kilkenny, Ireland. Me Mam and Pa died too, of burns. I choked. On the request of me Mam’s will, we were moved to her hometown which I guess near here, and on t' day of The Rising I…” Marco shuffles in his chair, the doctor looking somewhat bored by the whole situation. It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence to see the almost bald man just ticking boxes whilst Marco rambles on about what happened before the blank gap that fills his questionable period of time. Only, now that he mentions The Rising does the doctor stop and look to Marco with a interrogative gaze.

“Have you had flashbacks?” he asks, hand resting on the clipboard as it waits to hear what another PDS sufferer has to say- one out of the thousands he dealt with.

“Only one of when I was… I mean, me untreated state. But only when I was first treated and not since then. But it’s mostly of what happened before, me last moments... at night.” The doctor gently nods and writes something down. Marco watches him as he does this and he is please that for once someone is actually listening.

Sure, support groups were nice, but he knew the inner workings of one like the back of his hand, and even though he supposes they help somewhat, there is always that one idiot who decides that being a reanimated corpse was a good thing and that The Rising was only natural and needed to 'cleanse the world'. That person normally disappears and never comes back. The mixture of the typical format of every session and the repetition of almost the same story as every sufferer talks and comes close to tears is beyond unhelpful, and most of the time the groups are too large to get halfway around before the time is up and Marco is forced to shuffle back to his room.

The doctor carries on writing, only finishing when Marco decides to rearrange himself in the chair, only failing to make himself any more comfortable in the fraying plastic. When the doctor finally  puts the clipboard on the desk, folding his legs and looking into the eye of the partially deceased, he has the look of someone who is trying what to say next without offence but nothing more than that. It was a look of little satisfaction, and even less empathy.

“There isn’t a lot we can do to get you out of here. Since you have no family after all, there is no one who can take you in. We can try to find a placement, however it might be difficult to do so.”

Marco nods in understanding. He hadn’t expected anything less. Only, there was someone else the doctor could try.

“Um, before. I had a partner.” The group looks in shock. Him? Metal and dark stitches has someone? Even Marco is doubtful.

“We can’t do that. Unless you were married then there isn’t anything we can do.” As if laughing at the shot-down idea, the bell shrieks and the doctor indicates to the door, letting the group know that their time is up. Marco stands, wishing that he’d asked more, but instead he walks out of the room to the call of the doctor ushering in the next of an innumerable line that stretches down the hall and into the distance.

He goes to where he knows he can find someone, shuffling past the hoards of the implausibly pale, their eyes almost completely a stark white, bar of course the tiny knot of dark that flowersin the centre. Marco understands that he has this too, and yet he never dares to look. He knows what he looks like, almost, and he can remember how he had freckles, and unreasonably tanned skin for living in such a miserably wet part of Ireland; (internally, he thanks his parents for dragging him back to the comparatively Mediterranean England every summer break, where he would go to London, or stay in the dinky hotels as he wandered around the villages near where his mother had grown up, sometimes visiting the church where his Mam would sigh and say that this spot was so peaceful, she wonders why anyone would want to rest anywhere else) how he was pretty tall and, as his partner had said, annoyingly long limbed.

The only things he can confirm is that there are still rare sun-flecked freckles and they spatter his arms in an array of shades and sizes. His skin isn’t a ghostly grey like some others, but it wasn’t warm, as though someone has given him a blue rinse and now his skin showed only a cold tan. Quite frankly, he thinks it looks terrible, and he hates to see what it was like on his face, drowning out the look of the eyes that had once been deep brown, flaxen in the sunlight. He refuses every time a mirror is handed to him, purposefully looking to the floor in the showers, closing his eye and imagining that the cold water is heated, and that it feels like something more than just being wet. He wants to imagine that the too-high temperatures stop him from feeling cold when in truth he feels very little other than emotion, and he tries not to remind himself at every opportunity… which is often.

However, Marco quickly comes to the conclusion that his sense of touch is the worst of all. When he brushes up past something, there it is. But it feels like nothing more than a dull object with little interesting about it, despite whatever it is. Heat and cold don’t affect him. There is nothing painful, nothing that makes him flinch when it makes contact with him. Being ticked feels like nothing more than being touched so lightly it barely exists. Being punched feels like nothing more than being touched with more force. There is no more interaction between object and skin than just dull contact. He doesn’t enjoy it. That is odd to him.

It all means nothing now.

The open floor is bursting with chatter, and whilst a few people acknowledge his presence, there is only one person he wants to talk to right now. She sits in the corner, face impassive as she stares into space. Her skin is hued, yet the coolness only makes it look like she could get away with it, even against the ebony of her hair and her eyes the only one out of many who still retains the perfect black circle, despite the iris being gone.

She looks over to Marco and the line of her perfect lips breaks into a small smile as she waves him over, patting the empty seat next to her left side. Few dare in invade her space without asking, and when they do, she isn’t afraid to leave them in a state where doctors have to plate up the PDS sufferers bones in order for them to stand again. Mikasa was probably just as deadly now as she was before; after all, dying of a ruptured lung caused by a crash in her stunt car isn’t a death for the ordinary person. Even Marco remembered seeing the column proclaiming the horrific death mere weeks before his own. But for some reason they had found each other’s company welcoming despite not knowing each other before or during The Rising.

“You look upset. Is everything okay?” her voice is low, yet it is filled with the sound of chimes- a vibrating hum that soothes without trying- still strangely vibrant over the screeches and laughter.

Marco carefully makes his way over the tangle of outstretched legs, his own knee stiff with lack of use. “Not really. I’m stuck here 'til they can find someone to take me in.” He pops himself down on the chair and sighs, letting the constant chatter of other people drown out how much he wants to cry. Not that he could; PDS sufferers lose their bodily functions, including crying.

“I’m sorry.” Mikasa reaches an arm around his shoulders, pulling Marco closer for a small hug. From where he was sitting, he couldn’t see her. Anything on his right side was an absolute mystery. But he trusts her. “If I could I’d ask if you could come with me, but I’m not sure how Eren will do with one of us bloody bastards, let alone another.”

“Don’ worry 'bout it. I just have to wait.” He smiles as her weakly, turning to just see her over the bridge of his nose. He wishes he had family, like Mikasa, like a lot of the others. But the few that didn’t have to stay until they can convince someone to let them in, and it isn’t a popular option.

“If you want, I’ll ask around and see if any of Eren’s friends are willing to take you in.” The arm tightens around Marco’s shoulder, and he can feel the stitching catching on the pale green uniform they both wear.

He shakes his head. “There’s no point. No one wants t' take a walker in, I mean, not one they don’t know. There isn’t anyone who'd want me.”

Mikasa’s hand flies up under Marco’s chin and takes it in her palm. There’s no heat between them, only the touch of dead skin on dead skin. She turns him to look at her. “Not true,” she whispers, greyed eyes glinting, “who wouldn’t want a handsome and mysterious Irishman living in their spare room? I wouldn’t mind.”

The look she gives makes Marco almost believe it is true. Someone could take him in, even if only for a little while, even if it’s only because they get some financial reward from it. He knows he can help and be useful. It just takes someone to give him a chance to prove that.

But no one would, and that is the truth.

Mikasa stands up, removing her arm from around Marco as she turns to give him a sad smile. “I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ll check for you, okay? I don’t want to see you stuck in here.”

“Thanks.” It is all Marco can say. If she could help him, then that would be wonderful. But he doubts it.

Marco has to face the truth. Whatever the doctors say, whatever they get him to repeat over and over as they stick the long needle into the base of his neck and inject neurotripteline, making him repeat the same phrase to fight off the encroaching images of death he never sees but knows are there… he knows that he still isn’t alive, and never would be again.

He is dead, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

“I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer,” he whispers underneath his breath as he fights off the encroaching darkness that threatens his eyes with a prickling horror, “and what I did in my untreated state is not my fault.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't realise the song was from Divergent, I'm sorry. But I've decided to put up the one song that really inspired each chapter, and it just happened to be this one.
> 
> Also, this crossover, huh? You liking it? I think it's gonna work, but we have to see. I'm a bit of a fan of dropping characters in different situations and seeing how they'd get on and this one seemed too good a mix to be true- thanks to Thekla for letting me semi-steal it. 
> 
> Sooo. Yup. 'Kay. Bye.


	2. "We shall rise in this very body in which we now live and are and move."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Listen- [(Interpol- Obstacle 1)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkBAUqp6NKg)
> 
>  
> 
> _It's different now that I'm poor and aging, I'll never see this face again_  
>  _You go stabbing yourself in the neck._  
>  _It's different now that I'm poor and aging, and I'll never see this place again_  
>  _And you go stabbing yourself in the neck._

The scratches on the mirror cut through the image of her pale skin, only highlighting further the unholy grey hue that sits beneath a thin layer of caramel that Mikasa once recognised as her own. She’s always been rather pale, considering her part Japanese heritage, yet now it is deathly and she can’t help but think it looks like the work of an excellent make-up artist on the set of some hormone fuelled vampire flick. It’s perfect in a way she admires, and she wishes she never has to cover it up.

Only, she has to. The counsellors seem adamant about that, constantly mentioning the mousse and the contacts that (annoyingly for her and her formerly steel-grey eyes) only came in a burning cornflower blue and a shade-of-shit brown. She goes with blue, but merely because she remembers the light strips intertwining with the deep grey that Eren had always loved- in her mind this only excels in making the new blue only seem more vibrant- yet now she would rather take nothing over the ten minutes she spends trying to open the sultry curve of her feline eyes to slot the saline contact in. She can appreciate that having only a dark dot in the centre of a pool of milky white can be rather disturbing, hell, it had taken her weeks to be able to catch her own reflection and appreciate that this is what she is now. But it is like the world wants to forget that the dead walk the earth like the living. Mikasa has come to terms with that fact and revels in it more than perhaps she should.

In many ways, she hopes to spread that to others, Marco especially. He has a predisposition to hide himself more than need be, and Mikasa wonders if that is the fault of his newly found reintroduction in the waking world or if he has always been like that. She is drawn to it, though. The way he sits like a lost fawn with his long legs crossed underneath himself, his stitch-peppered right hand trying to hide the eye that had long since been gone, the other hand trapped underneath the elbow of his right arm as it gently plies the marred skin under his fingertips, rolling the smatter of freckles between his thumb and forefinger. She has tried so many times to convince him to just look at himself in the mirror, to just accept it as she had done and learn to carry on their second chance with a new set of eyes to mirror their new outlook. Yet with every window they pass, every surface that may be at least slightly reflective, his eyes drift to the ground and stay there until the certainty of his humanity is no longer questioned. He hates it, and he loathes what he had become; Mikasa can see that. It is obvious in his actions and movements, but more than anything, it scares Mikasa to think that he hates himself that much.

She has to admit that the tenacity of his will is somewhat inspiring for her, and she knows that with everything he sees to be wrong with himself, there is still the overwhelming desire within him that pushes towards the ultimate goal of staying alive in the state he is in, because that is the most important thing for any of them now. They have to learn to adapt and endure in an environment which is no longer their own, and if that means slapping orange concealer all over their faces and making their eyes go blurry with useless slithers of plastic, then so be it. Everyone has to adapt, not just the PDS sufferers. The whole country has to learn that now there was a new type of person, and they have to accept it and try to become accommodating of that and not repeat countless mistakes. It makes Mikasa smile to think that she is something so wonderfully different to a normal human that people make special arrangements for her… but it isn’t just that.

They are afraid already of what people like her can do, and beyond all else Mikasa can certainly sense that. Despite the few living and breathing people in the Norfolk facility, their horror is tangible, and she can almost revel in how it feels to her now- like a small yet sweet victory.

Three knocks sound on the door, breaking her out of her own sky gaze. She blinks at her stillness, the lack of obvious breathing so apparent. It is shallow, and she can barely see the rise and fall of her chest underneath the thick white tee, collarbones never shifting at the insignificant gasps she takes in. Breathing for her is slightly laboured; after all, she died with a lung filled with her own blood leaking in through the puncture of the rib that had pierced almost completely through; for God’s sake, it isn’t going to be completely normal.

It is fixed now, gratefully. Heaven only knows how many plates they had put in her chest to make it look as though it hadn’t collapsed. But she looks well- or as well as you could for someone who was dead- and as long as it doesn’t show, who is anyone to judge her for it? She knows Eren won’t, and she’s grateful for that.

“Two minutes,” she calls to the imparting knocks, slipping on the black military boot she had been given and tying up the laces into a harsh knot. She stands from the frayed, William Morris flowered cushion of the vanity unit stool, taking one final glance at the profusely daubed balm caked onto her own silvery skin, and instantaneously decides that its coming off as soon as humanly possible.  _Perhaps Eren has kept my makeup_ , she thinks, also wishing that he’s kept her clothes too. Then again, he could have moved on by now, found someone else who loves him just as much as she had, and now there would be nothing between them other than the loyalty he now has to dutifully owe her, all her stuff could be long gone, removed alongside herself.

The time they had spent apart could change so many things, and their relationship was one of them. There were endless paths Eren could have taken without her in the year they thought they’d never see each other again. What they had before was so perfect despite them having so little. Now, though, Mikasa could see it easily falling away underneath her fingertips; she understood that he could have a met someone, she understood that he had killed people like her and she had killed people like him, then to top it all off she was still technically dead.

She loves him beyond all belief and most likely always would. But the idea of Eren still loving her as she is now- as someone whose heart does not beat and with skin so cold it saps all warmth from around her, as someone is supposed to be in the ground and not wandering around on the surface like a lost soul… it breaks Mikasa to know that she is one of them. The urge she feels to lie back down on the thin mattress and come as close to sobbing as she possibly can is unreasonably strong. What if he still loves her? What then- do they try, does he allow himself to get called an endless list of filthy names just so they can allow themselves a few fleeting moments?

If.

It’s a heavy word.

Mikasa picks the plastic bag from where it is waiting at the side of her bed before taking her last few steps in the dingy room and opens the door, following the lanky warden down the hallway. In his left hand he carries a handgun, not one powerful enough to take down a room filled with walkers, but just enough to frighten a PDS sufferer into not trying anything ridiculous. Sometimes his finger twitches over the trigger, a small bead of sweat peering out from underneath the cuff of his scruffy uniform as he takes every stair with caution.

He peers back over his shoulder to look at Mikasa, and in return she throws him a confrontational look, questioning the man and why his whole aura reeks of passive condescension. The only thing he does in response is grip the gun tighter and grunt, before lithely springing off of the last step and veering right. Mikasa follows, half wanting to mention the palpable thickness that hangs in the air to the warden himself.

Aura had never been something Mikasa detected in life. She found others as straightforward as she found herself, and that was how she dealt with them. Only now she has come to realise that she can almost taste it. Sometimes a doctor will come around and their air is somewhat close to a fragrant fog- like the smell of watermelon shisha gone sour. The wardens are a cross between beer and cheap mystery-meats slathered in a packet sauce and sided with a few over boiled vegetables. Disgusting.

Now there is something more palpable. It hits her, sugary and almost vibrating. She knows this. She recognises it from the flashbacks; the morbid desperation to survive, a searing rush of adrenaline that she can follow without eyes. It isn’t like the others, weak and lazy and complacent. This is strong and heady, the undertone of pepper and sweat mixed into the potent mixture that her instincts has survived on.

If there was anything she understood it was that this is what she hunted with. Not the blurred vision or the muffled sound or dulled touch. Never did she use the world around her. No, with every passing day she used the air, and her lack of aura, to find and kill and avoid and destroy anything with a presence. It wasn’t perfect, but even now she senses the electric crack ripping the atmosphere and causing her mind to break into a sweat. She knows it is him, even in life she knew he had an incredible power. Of course, part of her expects it to be stronger, what people like her had caused would have certainly done that- growth through experience.

The warden coughs lightly and Mikasa lifts her low-hung head to look the tall man in the eye. He seems unnerved, she notices, beads of sweat tricking from his hairline only to be soaked up by the crumpled collar of his shirt. He purses his dry lips, licking them once in preparation of words before taking a noticeable breath and muttering, “y’ready?” in a voice barely audible to Mikasa.

She nods at him, sighing unnecessarily and shifting the bag on her shoulder as his free hand catches the worn handle and tugs it down.

The atmosphere changes, the gale of aura halting to pass for a sudden catch of stillness. All movement stops save for the door opening. Thick air coats everything with a permeable layer- a damp air fuelled with ionised tension. It builds and rises in concurrent waves, yet still stagnant, waiting for the moment of revelation.

Eren stands, head ducked behind a mess of scraggly brown hair that is longer than she remembers, the light catching the caramel hues under the thick darkness of his chocolate shade. At the click of Mikasa’s boot he looks up, and she can see he’s been crying. Each tear casts a separate shining shadow from the wide teal of his iris to the tip of his chin, where some of the thin locks of hair cling to him in childish protest, whilst the rest languidly attempts to graze at his broadened shoulders in limp and slightly greasy rats tails. She can’t help but think he looks older, not just in age, but in the way his eyes darken from their wide expectation to the deep scowl that seems so foreign, yet so at home between the bronzed skin and darkening irises. It scares her to know how much he has changed when she has moved on so little. The thought of what he had seen and done without her only makes her breath hitch. She hadn’t been there to protect him from everything that had happened, but worst of all it sickens her to know that she was on the side that fought against him, and that she would never forget the malicious things she had done to the people he tries to protect every single day.

The warden slides behind Mikasa, encouraging her to step out from behind the door and into the hallway. She’s reluctant to move over the invisible boundary between what she knew and what she hoped to regain. Already there are hints of fear playing their ways across Eren’s face, and she hates it- she hates knowing that she is the one who is causing that pain.

Her mouth twitches downwards, and not for the first time today she wishes that she could cry. Mikasa realises that Eren is afraid of her, of who she is now. Her mind feels sick, every sense feeling under and over-stimulated all at once, as though she can hear and see every stupid little detail, yet there is nothing for her to concentrate on, nothing to feel angry or sad about. Emptiness hangs around eye level, and they both can see it. She feels ready to just let herself crumple onto the floor, to rock her head into her hands and just wail in pain, because here he was- the one she owed her life to, the one who had given her so much hope and love, the one who had clearly seen and been through so much whilst she wasn’t there and had come to pick her up and take her home despite Mikasa being akin to a monster, the closest thing to a cold-hearted killer in this room… and he was still wearing his ring.

And not only that, but on his left hand, sitting above the centre joint of his index finger was hers.

He rushes forward as she tilts her head back and keens, almost collapsing into his arms as the aching sob tears through her chest, mind whirring with the overwhelming wave of emotion. Eren just holds her upright, gently shushing Mikasa as dry tears fall from her eyes and roll invisible down her cheeks. She doesn’t cry, but wails, and he can feel his heart breaking underneath the layers of torn clothing.

There is no rulebook on what to do. He knows that, plays by the fact that he is the one who calls the shots and risks himself in reckless abandon just to prove a point or push through. But now he cannot help but feel that he is lost. Eren does not know what to do, how to feel. It was true he had never moved on- he couldn’t bring himself to do that even when she had died and The Rising started. All that time he had spent plowing through life using every ounce of fire-fuelling anguish he had allowed to ferment inside of himself, learning that it has all been for naught, because he thought Mikasa would never come back. And now it isn’t true. His passion had been used to help him survive, to carry out the duties he had been given and make his unit proud. First and foremost, he is a warrior. But just as importantly, in his eyes, they were still married- both alliances were as equal in importance as the other.

“I’m so sorry,” Mikasa chokes out the apology against Eren’s shoulder, her hands clutching the checkered flannel shirt tucked underneath the worn green parka. Eren wraps himself around her like a blanket, distinctly noticing that the only warmth he receives is that of his own skin, reflected through the thick jumper he wears and returning back to himself. He sighs and rests his chin on her head, noting that it is still as soft as he remembered and just as perfectly groomed. “I’m so sorry, I just… I left you and-“

“No, no no you didn’t, you couldn’t…” Words drift off into the void of swirling calm, Eren gripping Mikasa tightly, his current… former… undead... wife clinging to him as though she wishes to never let go. He doesn’t want her to. The utter pain he had felt so recently was something overwhelming. Eren had lost so much when she had gone, and now she is back- Mikasa is his miracle, and even underneath all of the times he had grown to hate people like her, he found that he just couldn’t bring himself to be disgusted, just bemused and terrified.

So they stood together, the tall man slithering away to grab another patient and bring them to their family, where someone cries and the slump of plastic hitting the wall with a whump rattles away.

“I missed you so much.” Eren lets himself say it. It’s true; every word, the way his voice catches in the midst of the emotional prickle that burns the back of his throat- it’s true, and when Mikasa looks up to acknowledge his words, her now blue eyes somehow burning with a heated fervour that permeates life, it only makes him more glad he let himself go. So he does it again, sad smile curling his trembling lips with a salty dampness as he breaks the seal of the emotional catharsis he has never realised he still contains in his chest, “I really fucking missed you.”

Mikasa sniffs, seemingly on the verge of tears once again. But there is no wet gleam in her eye, only the way the dry orange creases the skin around her feline gaze. The bag in her hand crumples as Eren runs his hand down from the small of her back and along her arm to graze her wrist, removing the collection of brick-a-brack items gently from her grasp and she looks up to him, expectant.

He only smiles weakly and pulls away to offer his warm hand to her. “Ready to go home?”

 

 

_\--_

_I suffer from PDS and it is not my fault. What I did in my untreated state is not my fault, and does not reflect the actions and decisions I make now or had made before The Rising. I regret what I did, I regret that I hurt people. But I know that I could not control myself, because I was untreated and so had no control of my actions. I’m sorry to every person I hurt. I’m sorry for their families, their friends, and lovers. Every day I live with the actions of my past, and I curse it. But it was not my fault. It was not my fault._

_\--_

 

 

 

It is quite a journey from the centre in Norfolk to their home in the garrison town they had both grown up in, worked for, and for one part also laid to rest in. The surrounding scenery of endless purple fields, edges of the road lined with overgrown trees that had once been used to help feed the local zoo, (Eren had explained in a hushed tone that the animals had been removed at the start of The Rising and would most likely never return to eat the overgrown cuts that hung like the outreaching edges of thick cloth)  and the roads just as potholed and poorly sectioned as ever. It looks the same from the outside, yet only when they enter past the 'Welcome to Colchester, Britain's oldest town' did Mikasa realise that the world they had once known was battered into submission.

Colchester is famous for being the first official town on British record. Forged by the wandering fires of the Romans, Camaulodunum still retains many features considered by tourists to be of major historical importance; the town's major college had remnants of a bath house underneath its cafeteria's linoleum floor, Colchester castle, a Relic of the visiting Normandic armies in the centre of a rambling park still standing on top of the Temple of Claudius, round turrets grazing the roofs of the Victorian high street with a plethora of pop-up shops and temporary and permanent art galleries... And to top it all off, one of the best Sixth Forms in the entire country, again and again students gaining more A Levels than they know what to do with before deciding that they’d rather leave their success in the hands of overbearing parents, and decide to join the holy throngs of the Church instead.

That is the side of the town its people are renown for, not the dirty underbelly most people knew, the groups of thugs who wander the streets with armfuls of misery and hurt. They do not show the belly of the true beast of this town, no, not the troops who train for a home-town war or the cluster of houses for people who cannot cope. They never show the row of strip clubs with sultry back rooms, the house that someone grows weed in, that one shop that sells cigarettes and alcohol to young teens, the grown-up children who would suck you off for a packet of sweets and a fiver and without a word spoken to anyone, so long as you made them promise not to tell and they ask you the same in return. That is not the side of perfection, but it was the truth. That is life now, Eren thought, and it will never change now that the world had been just as royally fucked up as the people who live there.

Eren had realised too quickly after Mikasa had died that people were not worth it. The number of people he talks to reduce by the week, friends and colleagues who were at first understanding stopped calling or talking to him after training. Now it was reduced to perhaps three people- if he could call his squad leader a friend.  It hurts him to get attached. Every time something bad happened he not only worries for his safety, but for the safety of those he cares for, and in return they only worry for him too. Life had taught him that over and over again.

Mikasa is the only one he now knows can't be hurt. She had fallen down the metaphorical rabbit hole and then, all of a sudden popped out of the other side as some sort of superhuman being that is evolved beyond all else he and the world have ever known. There are two sides to every coin, but Eren can only see the side that faces upward in his palm. It is still her. Sure, her skin radiates a silver glow, and she stops breathing sometimes before she realises that it looks strange when she forgets. Yet it is her; her uplifting smile, her wind-chime-laughter, her small glances and twist of her hands to fill the silences. It is her who sits with her feet resting on the car dashboard, flicking off Eren's favourite radio station to take the IPod that had sat in the hiding space underneath the gear stick, untouched since the day of her death, and plugging it in, singing along to Obstacle 1 and strumming an air guitar with her lithe fingers.

Two years of pain was filled in within moments, even when wandering through the crumbling town he could forget it happened when he looked to her and she looked back, blue eyes seemingly almost the same shining grey from the distance between the two.

"How's Sasha?" Eren looks from the road briefly to glance at Mikasa, who talks as she stares out onto the common, its grass long overgrown.

He nods, unsure if she has seen. "Well. She joined the Garrison not long after I did. And Connie's been back for a few months, looking worse for wear, but back." The image of his shattered jaw comes to mind and he quickly shuffles it out. "Jean's okay too, well, sort of. His sister was killed."

"The untreated." Mikasa sighs, knowing the answer to what happened with Amilie already. "I'm sorry."

Eren ignores the apology for a moment. Switching the gears down to pass over a mini roundabout without bothering to check the right. He lifts his wrist to his nose, wiping away the feeling of a hair ticking the delicate skin. "Don't be," he starts, "you weren't the one who did it."

A shaky breath rattles through the car. "I mean before, when I... I tried so hard but it was so short. It was so short, I let go so quickly and I shouldn't have."

They pull right over an empty box junction, ignoring the half-working traffic lights that blinked green and red at the same time. The car is quiet, both remembering their side of those days, the beeps and the blackness, the emptiness and endless visitors, words and silence. For Mikasa it felt like mere seconds, to Eren it was almost a month of endless waiting. "You hung on for ages." Mikasa seems surprised by his words, her face a mixture of incredulous glances and open-mouthed surprise. "I was the one who gave up. You kept on living, but you weren't there... So... So pale and cold and you didn't move or talk or smile but you were- But you kept going. And I stopped that... I couldn't bare to see you try any more, so I should apologise. Not you, never you. Don't. Ever, please. I'm the one who's sorry. I'm sorry, really, really sorry."

His voice cracks through the apology, tears run down his cheeks once again, silently sobbing at the moment he signed the paper and the plug had been pulled as he cries for the moment he held her hand and saw her final breath. He remembers how the lights had seemed to dim in the room. He remembers how the doctor had tried to discreetly slip away before he started to bawl like a child, shouting her name without stopping for hours on end, until the words were silent and his lips cracked and bled. Then he had released her, placing his lips on her forehead, kissing each of her bruised knuckles before pressing against the silence of her pulse-less wrist and let his tears cool against her skin.

And in that moment, he hates the tint of orange that coats her face. It reminds him of something worse than that memory. It covers over what he has done to her. It hides the reason he had tried to do what was best for her. The orange wasn't her- the deathly pale of her final moments under the elegant cocoa is, and he wants to see it.

"You don't have to wear that make-up, not at home anyway, I won't mind if you don't." They travel down the one way road at twenty miles per hour, and he smiles weakly at her. She returns it, a thankful look that raises the delicate curve of her manicured eyebrows, and she almost looks out from under her lashes at him.

She wants to say thank you, to hug him or put a hands on his thigh and stroke it in gratitude. But instead she chooses to say something new, something unrelated that she needs to ask, even if it is for her own peace of mind. "Eren, I-" his head twists around to her, teal eyes awash with concentration, "I have a friend, someone from Norfolk, like me. He... He doesn't have anyone and, I don't know, I want to help him, he needs someone to help him..."

"You want me to ask and see if anyone can take him in?"

Mikasa purses her lips, but Eren can tell that his question was the correct assumption. It takes a few moments for her to reply, eyes not making contact but staring back out into the grey air of the town. "He's a good guy."

Eren chuckles and his hair bounces, "I don't doubt it. I'm just probably not the best person to ask for a favour. Sasha, maybe."

"Isn't there someone desperate enough for cash?"

"Not enough t' take a walk- a..." There's a joint sigh filled with regret, and Eren solely concentrates on the way the car moves along the road with jolting rocks. "Sorry," he concludes.

"No, I get it. We're still dangerous. I was just asking anyway." She strains against the seatbelt as the car stops to let another pass in the opposite direction, eyes not looking anywhere but out of the window at the slowly dissolving prettiness of the town. Here was where it got nasty; bricks turning black with soot and remnants of uncollected trash, houses small, old, and unkempt by tenants and landlords alike. A homeless man sits at the doorstep of a vacant tattoo parlour. Two thin dogs are tied to a broken fence. Three men with guns in their back pockets standing and passing a bottle of vodka between them, hoping the hot smoke from their lit cigarettes does not cause one of them to spontaneously combust.

They are close to home.

"I'll ask Sasha is she knows anyone, if you want. For your friend."

The car turns down one last road, ending in a brick wall, smothered with crude drawings of big breasted women, guns and knives in hand and blood dripping from over-stretched and blood soaked clothes, vulgar nipples straining through the torn material they wear. One holds the head of a snarling human monster.

Eren sighs at the sight, and pulls up to the left to drag the snaps of the hand break up to the top, shifting the gears to neutral and turning off the engine. Two doors open from down the road at ceasing of the chugging engine, one face he recognises as Sasha’s, her auburn hair somehow managing to catch the sickle grey light and make the messy pony-tail gleam. The other is an older man he barely speaks to, who soon disappears behind the peeling varnish of his door.

Mikasa looks around, both somewhat dismayed and nostalgic. This is her home, yet it is so different to the home she remembers. Everything is dirtier and falling apart at the seams. Every rancid corner spits out the vile smoke of the streets- polluted, languidly encroaching along the smoky trail it takes a few inches above the pavement before slipping off into the road and down the moaning underground cavern of the gutter. Bricks lie shattered and coated with the sticky tack of dried blood. This is what she imagines people like her had turned the world into. Everything is coarse, covered in something that shouldn’t actually be there, a coating of dust or blood or fluorescent paint in the form of crude pictures. Her home is a wreck, and as she steps out of the passenger door and onto the pavement, she can smell the biting whiff of burning hair.

Eren holds his keys out to Mikasa, who takes them and heads to open the front door to their house. It clicks as she turns the silver slip to the right, and the black door swings open to reveal the same half-painted hallway.

Meanwhile, Eren grabs the plastic bag from the back of the car. He notices its heavy weight only until he slings the thing over his right shoulder, following Mikasa inside of the home he has barely spent his time in.

In the time Mikasa had been gone, Eren hadn’t touched their half-refurbished home. The slim hallway is still a deep forest green on one side, the other an off white that is splattered with gentle and varying shades of dusk-blues and mints. The bannisters that follow the stairs aren’t much better; the paint is still peeling, and some of the rail is missing, but it is still mostly secure. The carpet had been ripped up long ago, disgusting coffee stained paisley replaced with the boards that had been hidden underneath, and Eren had promised only days after it had been taken up that he would varnish it. Clearly, he still hasn’t.

“I didn’t want to do it up without you,” he murmurs quietly from behind Mikasa, and she takes another step inside to let him in, “if I’m honest, I was gonna move out. Too many… memories. But if you wanna stay-“

“Yeah. We can still do it up, right?” Eren seems to brighten up the room with his rare yet brilliant smiles, white teeth so vibrant against the burnt honey of his skin and Mikasa realises just how much she needed to see it now; its singular motive so sweet. It is home, all of it is. His smile is home, the walls and the floors and his military jackets hanging from the wall on broken hooks. Everything inside hasn’t changed and she is thankful for it. Mikasa can see that her death had broken him, because it was clearer and deeper in his eyes and movements that he had suffered than anything else she had seen in her second chance- but she also knows that he is not the sort of person who would give up and abandon family because he can. He had wanted to leave because he didn’t want to wipe away the memories they’d just started to etch into the walls together, and in some way it calms her to think that he’d rather leave the memories untouched and move on completely rather than just try to cover the cracks and pretend that nothing had happened.

Eren shuts the door behind him and puts the plastic bag down underneath the short row of his coats with a chafing muffle. He is unsure of what to do next. Does he show Mikasa around as though she has never seen it before, or let her wander around to her hearts content?

He chooses the second option, watching Mikasa climb the steep steps as he stands and waits for her to disappear onto the landing before going into the kitchen. The old kettle is already filled, limescale dribbling out of the tiny cracks that had appeared along the seams of the worn-down utensil. He flicks the switch up until the dim light shines through the translucent plastic and turns to fetch a mug from the cupboard.

Just underneath, the home phone sits on its stand, a light blinking next to an L.E.D ‘2’. Eren presses the voicemail button, listening to the voice over the rattling metal.

“You have two new messages. Message one-“

There’s a clatter pouring through the speakers, a muffled cough and breath ringing out before a voice filters in. It’s high and sweet, but quick with the same quick accent Eren had grown up with- not quite London drawl, and not quite Essex drab.  _“Y’right, er… it’s Sasha. Y’can probably tell ‘cause, well y’know, ya’know me so I- er, yeah. I saw y’leave this mornin’ and I thought that maybe y’d let me, well, uh, say hi.. to Mikasa? Maybe?”_ the voice huffs and leaves the room silent for a few pregnant moments,  _“Look I’ll come round later when you’re home, an’ I won’t tell Hanji, promise- not after what happened with Connie. So I’ll see y-“_

The voice is cut off by the obnoxious automatic female. “Message Two.”

 _“Eren.”_ The gravel voice is the first thing that hits Eren. There’s a dark tone, almost threatening in the way it says his name. And although he feels like he should be slightly afraid, he isn’t. Eren knows that this is the voice of a friend- or somewhat a friend, more like a colleague he tends to hang around with when they aren’t fighting- even behind the warning tone.  _“Sasha told me about Mikasa, and I’m- fuck. Okay. Look, I don’t want to see her, not yet anyway. It’s nothing personal, well… sort of, but- shit, this sounds bad, but I can’t see her like that, I’d fucking hate it if I can’t not think of… just… ugh… not after what happened in Easthorpe, y’know? I just need some time. And I talked it over with Hanji and they’re giving me- I mean, Hanji’s gonna look at some, I don’t know, some_   _weird therapy bullshit to sort this out, ‘cause I can’t be around those… the… not like this, how I am. I’m sorry. Tell Mikasa I’m sorry.”_

The phone cuts out, leaving Eren to stand in the kitchen just as the kettle clicks off, the shimmering boil tempering down into a rumble that passes into cold silence.

 

 

 

_\--_

_We did what we could to survive. That was all we could do. Every day was another step towards the same oblivion we had experienced the day before, and the day before that and all of the days since The Rising. We survived because we had to, we fought because that was what it took to live in a fucked up world. Some of us just took it further than others. I, perhaps, took it one step too far. My hands are still coated in their blood, my head still remembers their faces and what I did to every last one of them. Now, sometimes I look into the mirror and see nothing but the gaze of a man on the wrong side of the divide, and I can’t help but feel as though I am the one who should be feared, not them._

_\--_

 

 

 

The door to their office finally shuts for the last time that day, and Hanji almost squeals at the possibility. All day they had spent their few golden moments alone being persnickety and flicking through the hacked system Moblit had intruded for them and studying the files carefully, looking for the one word they crave to see. Perhaps an hour after their past patient had left, they notice a face they recognise, smiling lightly at the date of release. 

They almost want to call Eren up right then and nag to get Mikasa in. The tests they want to do! The things they need to know, the things they have to find out without the help of the government! Sadly, however, Hanji cannot use Mikasa for her tests. She's already been claimed.

 _What do they know?_  Hanji thinks.  _What have they even tried? Or more importantly, what aren't they telling us they've tried?_

It's infuriating. Information that Hanji had needed for so long and still does need is being kept from them. All of the bodies that had died under their command and the command of Levi and Erwin were worth naught if the corps didn't end up with answers. It could have been stopped if they had just known what to look for and what to do, not instead running off of the dribbles of fucked up information they had only gathered through painful experience and wild guesses. They just aren't willing to give too much away, and Hanji can see why.

They are afraid of them, their capabilities and what the thousands upon thousands of people with the majestic ability to live without eating or drinking, to sustain themselves seemingly forever on pure air and sunshine... they had evolved beyond anything anyone could imagine. 

Hanji swipes the piles of doodles and notes to one side, scrolling listlessly through the endless stream of names followed by dates. They lean on the desk with their left hand holding their face from falling in exhaustion onto the polished metal. 

 _It's just two words, just two damn words,_ they repeat to themselves.

The hours pass by in daunting silence. The names continue endlessly, moving effortlessly into the thousands without trying. Name after name after name fall into her mind and escape with the following seconds only for new names to take their place. Dates are repeated and switched before being repeated all over again. They just want two words.

And finally they come to the list.

There is perhaps just over twenty-five for the Norfolk centre, and all of them are unreleased and unwanted. Those few patients are the dregs, the useless ends no one wants or needs. Except, of course, for Hanji. They feel almost desperate enough to scream in joy, but instead slam the desk with their flat palm and nod their head with a renewed vigour. They are what they need, and if Hanij can get them, all the better for the corps and the patients. 

It takes only a moment for Hanji to dig the key out of their jacket pocket and put it in the keyhole in the drawer of their desk, unlocking it to reveal the single, block phone that resides in there. They take it out and click the dial button.

The thing rings three times before it picks up without a sound. 

"I'm sending over a list. I want these biters here within the week." The call cuts out, and Hanji finally lets themselves shout and squeal wildly and clap their hands at the thought of what was to come. 

Just a week, and they'd know. In a week they would have help for their subordinates and their cause. Hanji transfers the names to a document and sends it off in three clicks, not even bothering to save the item before titling it and sending the twenty-six names off with a smile. They were theirs. Every last one was up for Hanji's use, whatever that may be, and all they had to do was look for those two words and they had what they needed. Two words let Hanji know more about Partially Deceased Syndrome than any doctor had lead them on to know, and all they had to do was look for them.

_On Hold._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to let you know, Hanji is non-binary, and I will use gender neutral pronouns for them throughout the fic.
> 
> Also, the song. I hope you like it, it's sort of different compared to the rest of the songs I've chosen for this, but I think it's worth it. (It's the song Mikasa is listening to in the car) The point of it was to capture the sort of person I want Mikasa to be; a more free-spirited person who is accepting and stands up for the things and people she cares for with every ounce of her being, but has a sultry dryness to her personality. This song sort of reminds me of that. There's a slight 1980's soft rock with a punk edge, and the connotations that brings with it just fits for me and I couldn't bring myself not to use it.
> 
> But what about the town, huh? I decided to go for something a bit different to Roarton (apart from the fact that this is a real place) so it's a military town instead, and rather a big one too. I wanted a different dynamic for the location really, but something that still has the twinges of the village communities that are dotted all over the surrounding area. It seemed like a good area, and I can definitely imagine it in that sort of situation, and it would be a warzone. 
> 
> Thank you so much for the hits, kudos' and lovely comments. Hugs and kisses to you all.


	3. "'I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.'"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Listen- [(Cartel- Wasted)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3weE4Kq7kY)
> 
>  
> 
> _But he's 32 and invincible._  
>  _The cancer he had it was visceral_  
>  _He never saw it coming...thought he had his whole life_  
>  _Sick in the morning and he died in the night._

The van rumbles along unknown streets, desperately pacing through barricades Marco can see slip away behind him, around burnt-out cars and houses crumbling to the ground and all windows smashed in a jumbled web of cracks and thin holes.

It is packed, body to body in silence that is nowhere near companionable, but something closer to camaraderie-needed to stay strong through the jolting potholes and tight bends that make the rows down either side shift.

Next to him sits two women with similar cloths wrapped around them by the doctor that had collected them from Norfolk; the taller with her arm around the younger, staring at a young man opposite with dark hair down to the base of his neck, cracks of purple stretching around his nose across high cheekbones.

“This is yer fault,” she pits, caressing the blondes arm as she snivels into the other woman’s chest.

He snorts and rolls his blank eyes in a dramatic circle, finishing it off with a slight bob of his head and a smirk. “Don’ do that. I was the one w’ot got dragged off. I got what I wan’ed.”

“You’re an idiot, Alex. Thinkin’ yer can get away wiv takin’ it befer yer injection? Are yer thick ‘er sommit?” Two fingers raise to her head, fake trigger pulled. “Thank fuck I got conne’shuns, eh?” And she laughs haughtily, pulling the other woman onto her lap and staring at Alex over her shoulder. Marco can see her grinning into the back of her beige coat.

“If it weren’t fer me, ye’d be dead fer real this time, an’ I wouldn’ be able ter take yer t’ see-“

“Not now Ymir.” The blonde pipes up, spinning to look the taller woman in the eye and smiling shyly. “You already know that they’re on your case. I can’t have them shoot you for saying… that, okay sweetheart?”

Marco watches from the corner of his left eye as Ymir places a kiss into the blonde’s cheek and stares at the man opposite. She raises her voice, seemingly speaking to everyone “Hear that?” she demands, sitting herself up, still with the tiny woman on her lap. “My Krista called me ‘er sweetheart, ‘kay? If y’ touch ‘er, yer dead. Especially you, Mister fink-I’m-tough-shit. You lay a finger on ‘er and it won’t be a bullet in yer head. It’s gon’ be me teeth.”

“Ymir, stop.” And suddenly she drops to the seat with a pleased smile. She puts another kiss on Krista’s face, just below her crushed nose, before lifting up the fabric until just her large eyes are exposed.

Everyone ignores them again including Marco, who instead closes his eye and stares at the back of his eyelid.

He thinks of how tired he already mentally feels, dragged up in the early morning only to be completely forgotten when it came to the injections. Luckily he had been at the back of the queue the day before; without Mikasa to stick up for him and push his way to the front he had slipped to the back naturally and day after day turned into week after week of him standing at the back of the long line that stretched all over the former prison, and the hours slipping into darkness every time.

Group therapy has been a thing of the past. In some ways he misses the pariah talks from the ULA wannabes.

Alex, he feels, is worse than that.

After he settles himself down and a good chunk of time passes, he begins to ramble on and on, not stopping as they pass the sign that reads A12 Colchester, ignoring the taps from the cabin of the truck.

“An’ y’ get those people that pussyfoot around the risen like me. Even ones like us. They think tha’ jes because they put on that cover-up shit and have contacts in their eyes it makes them one of the livin’. It don’ though. Tha’s why I thought tha’ takin’ the ol’ blue’d show ‘em that the don’ want us ‘ere.”

“An’ the reason you got dragged off was ‘cause y’re an idiot that almost killed a woman. Listen mate; ain’t nobody gonna like yer if yer a dick. Tha’s why we lay low, a’right? Don’ flash if yer don’t like yer own dick.”

“Ymir!” Krista shrieks, and the whole thing stops, everyone bounding unwillingly into a pile as the truck screeches.

Marco removes himself from between Ymir and a large man, the cloth falling away to sit around his neck. Outside, the doctor that had taken them all talks in a hush he cannot hear.

“Shit. Shit, Krista, honey, put your scarf around you. Don’ let ‘em see, okay?” Her tiny partner nods and ties the shawl around her face tightly, Ymir doing the same. But as she does so she turns to Marco, looking at him with blue tinted eyes. For the first time he sees her face fully, and he sees the bulbous tumour that eats her cheek away, dark against her olive skin and fading into other engorged freckles and moles that scatter her face. “You too buddy. Don’ let ‘em see yer different. Treat yer different too, like yer gon’ break ‘er sommit. Trust me.”

There is something in her expression that tells him to believe her. So he follows Ymir’s lead and does up the scarf so it wraps around his face tightly, leaving his eye uncovered. Over the top he lifts the hood of his jacket just as a flood of light pours in through the back of the truck and a bright face greets the group with a falsetto smile and a pair of shining, glass covered, crazy eyes.

 

 

 

\--

_When I got out of there, I saw how they treated us. I was early, thankfully, and even the family I had left had no clue without what little remained of our fucked up Labour, do-as-they-fucking-want Government. Of course, the Conservatives pussy footed around and did everything with a sprig of thyme and an accidentally offensive word. No help on either side of the ocean. We’re left drowning._

_So like before, I was treated like shit on the wall. A different kind- not the sort that could be scraped off if anyone believed that it could be fixed, because the room would stink of shit either way, I'd still die either way… now? It’s kind of like the room has to be burnt because it’s Satan’s crap smeared into ‘666’ and an upside-down cross on the wall._

_So either way, us second-chancers are fucked._

_And yet the ULA are good, different to everyone else. We stick up for each other. We don’t give a shit if half of your face has fallen off… each one is just another, like a community made through necessity and fear. But most of the others don’t see that. They don’t see that we’re better because we are the next stage in the realisation of what we are. Instead, like the breathers, they walk around and think that because they’re now ‘equal citizens’ it means that they’re safe. They ain’t. In denial, or whatever you want to call it._

_Every breather wants us dead. Because that’s what we are made for. We were made to be killed, by breathers, for breathers. To atone for the sins they’ve made._

_The Rising is nothing but a scam, and I don’t understand why no one can see that._

 --

 

 

 

Memory burns. Memory strikes at the heart of men and shrivels it into dusty ashes, consumes it and wraps it in a licking veil of white heat until the flesh it burnt and raw, until all that remains is the pain caused by the soul-wrenching act of remembering. The things man holds in their hearts shape the view of the people, and the crowds abide by the majority. People learn that the differences they burn into their skin do not make them unique, but impure- they stand out because of it- all different, but all the same.

Memory is terrible.

People start at the height of purity, cast in darkness and pleasantries along with the breath-taking cries that start their small lives. Those are the sounds of the angels sighing at their impending sympathy. They are white and wonderful, and the people cry at their own shrill sound. However, as time passes, that changes. Cries become dirty, greying with age and filth. They pick it up. They share it. Filth. Dirt. Disgusting people with disgusting thoughts and habits that are shared and exploited by whom-so-ever can figure out the immoral code of living with the burden of being human.  They all know to try and learn to love others for their filth- that is human nature, and those who own it appreciate it far less than what they should. Ignorance is the flesh that coats the whitened bones of truth, a single solid purity that stand in the heart of the layers of thick meat humans see as perfection. It is not the core, but the external people fall for- the skin, not the heart.

That is what leads people to their downfall. They believe with every inch that their love is set in something worthy; that believing in the caked-on mud is any substitute for what lied beneath the flaking exterior. Layers of armour are built with the passage of time, each one thicker and darker than the last. Every passing moment is more burnt with time than the last; acidic scorches around the edges of photographs, tear stains marring ink, and the sound of silence filling the shifting images of video. No memory or judgement is white, only grey and grey and more damn grey that piles layer upon layer until it becomes so dark that the memory no longer exists, and people are left to clash with their intrinsic exoskeleton.

It makes them; the streaks on their skin, the tears in their trousers.  They wear their scars with pride because they heal, they prove that once upon a time they were hurt, broken, and now they know how not to be. They pretend to know the answer. People wear their false lives with every ounce of their being and revel in it until- one day- they die, and all of the people that had sullied the dead cry over the times that person had been thrown into the ashes by their actions.

No matter how pure the act, no matter how good the intentions, people grow dark and cynical with age. Making love, flourishing opinion, living a quiet life and expanding your mind all mean nothing when your body no can no longer take those things and make them into something meaningful. Death sticks people in a perpetual state of uncleanliness, because the purification of man is the romanticism of memory, and the truth is disgustingly dusty. People sanitise themselves with falsification to feel clean again, and people do it because they want to return to the people they once were but only fail in caging themselves in the thing they claim to hate the most.

Or, as Levi simply puts it, "people like to make shit up about themselves and pretend that they're all fucking saints, when really they need a kick up the arse."

As Levi watches Hanji drive in a wide arch across the broken-Tarmac courtyard, he thinks of the day he saw her throat being torn out by a walker. Sure, he can imagine that it had been for something. Levi could contort his memory, try and imagine that he had been concentrating on helping when the fluorescent arch of blood ribbons the air along with the tethers of her final cry. If he did believe in humanity, he would pretend to be unequivocally upset, distraught, and falsify his hate for himself beyond all belief until the moment he turns to the haemoglobin gleam and does nothing but waste a bullet into her skull before she could feel the infected grip of endless finality consuming her thoughts.

Only, he never does. His hands are sullied with ten souls for every finger; his feet have trodden in the blood of comrades and unwitting foes. Levi knows that death is just another step that people cannot bear to believe in, but he understands the inevitable beauty of it; the silence and the blank loneliness in which he sometimes wishes to thrive to survive, in place of the returning life to those who deserved it infinitely more than what he does. He understands that the darkness is pure filth, yet he knows he deserves to be cast into it more than any other he had known. Levi cannot hate himself for causing her death, no matter how much he questions his decision in times of desperation.

Who was he to let his friends scramble through the descent? What power did he have over others that allowed Levi to decide that a person deserved the fall? Yet what made his shaking hand the authority on administering that, or the opposite?

Simply knowing them gave him a tiny right. He couldn't allow them to suffer and certainly couldn't bear the unnecessary pain, both his own and his unit's. Death is unfortunate, yet pain is not. Pain can be administered and relieved. He simply had pulled the trigger and let himself rot in the cruel reality the last year had provided him.

Reality waits for him, clambering one after the other out of the caged military jeep- the childcatcher's cart, a gaol on wheels. One after the other; five, then seven, rising to ten and then finally twenty-two. All look confused, all with the same false tincture of colour. They stand in a broken line, some gathering obscenely close, huddling, others separated and hiding behind their own bulky clothing. Three have scarves wrapped around their faces, and Hanji beams at them shortly before looking to Levi with an equally horrific grin.

"This too few?" They ask Levi, reaching into the cab of the truck and pulling out a thick file before slamming the door. Nine walkers flinch, two squeal.

"It's not for me to decide," he reminds them in a rough tone as he snatches the folder from Hanji's grip and flicking through. It's mostly the same. The same date, similar ways out, ages all between 18 and 45 at the time of death. Some photos are normal, some are horrific- and Levi can only think that the few with scarves wrapping up faces, the one with gripping bandages up his right arm and around his hand to hide whatever lay underneath.

Unnatural monsters. Reliving their lives with a second darkness. Remembering the past that should be oblique.

"Take that shit off." He barks, and Hanji clicks their fingers with a grin, the three cloth-masked figures tentatively lifting their hands to unravel the black woollen strips. Nervous glares greet him along with three disgusting faces; the first barely has a nose, the front of her scalp completely devoid of delicate blonde hair, shaved off like a broken doll to leave a horrible cut at the back, edges singed and shrivelled. The man in the trio is missing an eye, biting metal dots running tacks across his cheekbone, meshing his ear together along with a few strands across his deep-haired scalp and down his neck to disappear under the thick confines of a jumper, sleeve rolled up on his right arm to display the mummified appendage. The third- another woman with a lithe, swaying figure- has elephantine skin, a large growth on the cheek that is crusted and desperate to fall away, the whole thing smattered with increasingly tiny freckles that retreat from the monstrosity that had once proliferated on her skin. Levi doesn't want to, but he flinches at the sight, and so do the three walkers who all react to the chink of the handgun resting in its holster on Levi’s hip. He doesn't understand why they got the chance to relive and start again when it is so obvious they aren't meant to be alive and moving; _hell,_ he thinks, _one of them can't even put the cover-up on properly._

Levi barks a thick cough, swiping the file shut and slamming it against his thigh. “Listen up.” Heads snap up to meet the short, cold gaze. “This isn’t summer camp. This is just somewhere the government can shove you and forget that you exist. Understand that. This isn’t home, and we aren’t here to look after you or listen what you have to say about your shitty existence. Right now, you have about as many rights as the shit in a cesspit.”

A young face to the far right glowers at the floor, the rest look distant- resigned.  Levi wonders if his words hit too close to home for them, or if all biters just shared the same dull expression. “You’re here for the single purpose of helping our medic, Dr. Hanji, conduct research, whatever they decide that may be. You have no right to refuse, and if you do then I or anyone else in this facility is permitted to shoot to kill. Do you understand?” the round of nods that follow punctuate Levi’s authority, and he almost lets loose a small smile at the thought of their submission.

Hanji is still milling around, casting slanted glances between Levi and the walkers. They look… excited, and it scares Levi more than anything else. He knows how potentially dangerous the walkers can be and yet Hanji seems to be so in control of them simply by glancing at them through the blinding gleam of their glasses. “Call for escorts,” he calls to her, suddenly untrusting of his and Hanji’s power over the substantially larger group of walkers. It is, after all, just the two of them, one handgun and two Tasers against twenty-two undead and potentially lethal killers.

“Yes Sir.” Hanji removes the radio from their top pocket, a toned bleep emitted from the speaker, their eyes trailing across the group of nervously waiting walkers. “Squad 4 Hanji Zoe requesting 2 and 4 as backup at Station 2-B stat. Over.”

There is a slight crackle over the system followed by a firm voice, deep and authoritative. _“Commander Smith here. Squads 2 and 4 have been sent outside. I’m directing 5 to you now from East Tower. Over.”_

“What the-” Levi rips the black device from Hanji’s hand, pressing the button down firmly as he allows his rough speech to come through gritted teeth. “Why the fuck are our teams out?”

_“We have a problem by the YMCA. A gang has arranged a mauling, there’s suspected Blue Oblivion use. I would have sent Squad 1 but they’re on patrol. Over.”_

“So you send over two noob teams without the squad leaders? Good fucking job, Erwin. Really.”

Levi sighs, passing the radio back into Hanji’s chest. The thing splutters with beeps and grating static as they put it back into their top pocket. Hanji looks to the right, following the trail of PDS patients that stare at the pair, some of them shuffling around uncomfortably, almost restlessly.

“We need to get them in, preferably now,” Hanji states under their breath.

“I’m not taking the risk. We’re waiting.” Levi shoots back.

Every single body waits; silent, unmoving. It’s like a switch has been flicked and now the only thing that moves is the breeze that grazes through hair and ripples clothing. The line of treated is still unbalanced, and Hanji quickly notices that the two badly damaged female patients stand incredibly close, whilst the other almost huddles into himself, never catching the gaze of anyone along the line- unlike the other patients who all share confused yet steely glances with one another at regular intervals.

Hanji isn’t keen on that. As fascinating as they find Partially Deceased Syndrome, the sufferers always seemed to have an unknowing advantage. They know things that the military and Government don’t. Blue Oblivion, for instance. Rare traces occasionally found on the recently evolved radicals have been constantly sent to be destroyed. Hanji has never received a sample, despite their constant begging. They know it’s something important, something that could get ridiculously out of hand if a treatment is not found. And yet each application for a sample is rejected, time and time again.

It was one of the reasons why Hanji now had so few subjects. At the time they had applied for the original twenty-six, Norfolk Treatment Centre had gladly added another load onto the list- ones that had been returned for uncompliant behaviour. In the end, the number had reached sixty-one. That had been reduced only days later, when a newly re-admitted patient slipped Blue Oblivion through security and had gone on a rampage along with many of Hanji’s promised patients.

That is the problem with Blue Oblivion. The tiny vile filled with glittering sea-foam powder not only reverts PDS sufferers to a state almost identical to the one before the use of neurotripteline but drastically reduces the rate of the patient being cured again. Many patients who take high dosages- such as the ones in the Treatment Centre had done- are unable to become inaugurated into society again and so have to be put down by force.

“Squad Leader!” a male voice cries out, along with the sound of footsteps. The group of biters turn to the sound as do Hanji and Levi, who salute loosely to the group of six soldiers running in unison across the tarmac lead by a large, hulking man with a prominent nose and dirty blonde hair parted down the middle. “Apologies for our tardiness.”

“Thank you Zacharias. We need formation around this group for escort to the medical block. Keep your tasers on hand; refrain from shooting unless the situation becomes extreme, I need as many of these as I can get.”

The man grunts at Hanji, sniffing loudly as he nods to the Squad he leads. His group shifts around the group of walkers who immediately become pushed into lines of three; one small woman taking the lead, the others forming a line either line on each side of the small groups. The first two soldiers stand two walker-rows behind the head of the group, the next two the same distance behind that. The leader of Squad 5, Mike Zacharias, stands to the left side of the group two rows behind the second soldier. Levi positions himself on the right hand side, giving a firm glance to the two badly damaged women who appear to be holding hands, the taller of the two taking a sharp look back before slowly releasing the hand she holds.

Hanji takes the rear. The last few straggles bunch together, bar the man with one eye who tries his best to keep to Hanji’s right side, his good eye flicking back and forth between the group and their face with a jittering gaze. He visibly shies away from the closeness of the other walkers, both interestingly and unusually.

They allow it, though. There’s something about him that appears ruthlessly nervous. Hanji doesn’t think emotion was something that badly affected a PDS patient, but the perpetual twisting of his hands seems to prove opposite. A smile automatically stretches across their face at the sight, taking in how everything changes on the part of the man’s face they can see, all almost normal except for the lack of pupil retraction and lack of colouration on the cheeks.

“Nervous, bud?” They ask. The group begin to move slowly across the yard, the guards in front keeping a small black box in the hand closest to the group of patients.

The man looks forward towards Levi, and Hanji can’t help but smile as she notices his Adam’s apple bob in his throat with every tentative few steps.

“I… I didn’t want to say in front of him, but I didn’t have t’ injection this morning, we left before they had th’ chance. I thought he was gonna shoot me if I said anything, especially that.” His hands begin to twist nervously again throughout the lilted, accent stained words, and Hanji lets out a small laugh at his reaction.

“Yep. He’s a scary man despite his stature.” The group veers right, the man stumbling slight at the change of direction. “I won’t let him get you though. At the moment you’re all too precious to get rid of.”

He chuckles, hands slowing down slightly, a weak grin jittering on his lips. “I’m not sure whether t’ be grateful or scared of that statement.”

“Both is the answer.” Hanji replies honestly. “Why weren’t you injected earlier?”

The group halts, the woman at the front punching in a code to the metal-bolted door. Conversation between Hanji and the walker ceases, only to start up again once the door sweeps to the side and the party continue through the door, albeit slightly squashed.

“I don’t react well. Th’ first time they did it I hit my head against a wall. They tied me down since.” The walker gives a loose shrug, his thick accent suddenly becoming blindingly apparent through the turning softness of his phrase. Hanji remembers the files, only one or two of the recently diminished sixty-one from anywhere outside of England- and one had been Russian.

But all Hanji can do is lead the walker forward, keeping a close eye on him and the group ahead of them.

The group has reached an area Hanji recognises; the medical bay. In a matter of days it has been converted from an almost open hanger into a relative prison. The corridors stretch almost infinitely from one long wall to the next, streaking down the length of the space in a thin row that only the military knows is parallel to many more identical passageways. Doors lead off, some heavily guarded with ever-present security cameras and daunting locks that certainly couldn’t just be picked, whilst others had been left ajar and open for anyone to look through. All thirty people trailed down the path, the woman at the front lifting her right arm to grab the attention of the soldiers she leads, then stretch three fingers out and flick them to the right.

Levi nods at the direction and looks to Zacharias, who takes a quick glance to him, then to the six walkers trailing languidly in front. Together they pick up their pace, walking to stand directly between the two lines; one containing the two damaged females, the other a somewhat dazed older man with a badly receding hairline.  “Step this way.” Levi indicates with his arm, Mike doing the same with tasers in hand, and the group split from the main pack before stretching the gap between a slightly opened door, Levi leading the way and Zacharias trailing behind. The door is slammed behind them with the confirming sound of a guttural beep and the faint damp green of a newly activated light.

This process is repeated, the first group dissipating down a door to the left with a wave from the woman at the front, her left arm raising and then pointing with a single digit to a door ahead. The corridor never seemed to shrink in length- Hanji had made sure of that, creating a design using mirrors at the far end of the hallway by their office to create the confusion illusion of forever, something that would be daunting to those who had no clue of what was going on. Even on them, it works reasonably well, and Hanji can see a few confused glances between the biters who do not know that really they are only another ten doors from the end of the building itself.

The second group falls away, leaving the woman at the front, Hanji and the group of four walkers. They carry on, travelling further into the network before eventually settling on a door only three away from Hanji’ office.

“Are you sure you want them this close?” the woman asks. All nine eyes stare at Hanji, who flashes another mad smile before trying to hold back the manic laughter repressed in the reply to Petra’s cautious comment.

“If I could I’d have them living in my office.” The female officer sighs at Hanji, knowing full well that what she said is no exaggeration. So instead Petra ignores Hanji and types in the code to the door, not allowing anyone other than herself to see exactly what she has chosen to write. “-and I tell you now that some of these guys totally need my help. I mean, take freckles here. Poor walker’s barely able to gauge depth with just one eye. No wonder he’s stuck so close to me the entire time and always stayed to my right. He’d fall over before he got the chance to attack anyone. Probably never touched a soul.”

“Just get them inside Hanji. Play around with your new toys later.” Petra rolls her eyes, Hanji continuing to grin next to the wide-eyed expressions of the walkers.

 One steps forward. His features are screwed into a scowl, marring his winter's night skin and baring his white teeth in a mocking growl, dull brown eyes wavering behind thick eyebrows. "I ain't no fuckin' toy, bitch," he spits, and a young, female walker gasps in frightened shock.

"I was being polite." The strawberry blonde almost laughs at the way the young lady has to hold the younger man back from only God knows what intentions. But Petra ignores that, only seeing the false humanity, time and time again the image of someone almost filled with ideocnycracies she recognises being cut down by flowing blood and horrified, death-blank stares that tumble through her vision. She tries to be humane, only ending up with an unwanted sarcasm that is swept up in the motion of her directing arm and grey smile- a defence mechanism, a way to deal with people so terribly different yet similar to herself. It is something she barely sees in her normally sweet demeanour, but bitter memory changes her, hardens her resolve and contorts the soul of sympathy. Petra smile comes up short, snarky. "I thought toy was better than lab-rat, but if you don't like that then I guess we could just call you biters… rotters, or walkers or scum. It's not like we don't do it behind your back anyway."

"Either way," Hanji interjects, pushing at the back of the walkers to encourage them forward, "I think we need to get them settled, no?" a meaningful look is exchanged, the small group purposefully pushed along the shortened corridor, metallic doors lining periodically, numbers next to the frames.

This corridor is shorter, darker, with chinked metal floors and grey walls. There’s an end, one blank wall that leads to nothing bar the offcut rooms that the walkers are roughly shoved into, one after the other.  Hanji shoves the half –blind one into the cell furthest down, starting to close the door. He turns, blind eye facing them, brow furrowed in dark concern, arm outstretched in silent protest of the action.

“Please,” he croaks. Hanji nods, despite realising that he is unable to see her from the position he stands in- vulnerable, cornered and without senses. They realise that he is lost, the crack in his plea desperate and weak so unlike the overcast picture of a man in front of them.

The door creaks as they pull it back open an inch. “I’ll be back in ten to give you the injection.  Just sit down and wait for me, okay?”

There’s a metallic sigh, and he nods. Hanji pulls away from the door with a confirming buzz and begin to retreat, catching Petra’s eye and revelling in the few quiet seconds before they have to get to work. It’s remarkably quiet, not one rotter deciding to cause a ruckus or attempt a futile escape, instead staying eerily silent and passive.

Petra sighs, opening the door out into the main corridor and turning right to head to Hanji’s office. She follows behind the doctor, reminiscing quietly.

“I shouldn’t have said that, should I?”

Hanji can only laugh at the guilty woman, jumping noisily from the walls and reverberating from all directions in burnished, pulsating waves. “No,” they reply honestly, “no. It was really stupid of you.”

Despite the words, Petra knows that the smile on Hanji’s face is nothing but empathetic.  They had seen the face of their town destroyed, crumbled into ash and rising smoke as the people scrambled for the thin threads of pointless survival. Time after time they had seen blood spilt. Days went past without any food. Nights were horrific; one bullet in a gun, the decision to end it all resting on if- and only if- a snarling, blood coated face stuck its mauled head around a doorway before the sun rose in the sky. Hanji and Petra had seen more bloodshed than most. They had experienced what the walkers could do, and it sent them both into a wild labyrinth of complex mystery and pure contempt.

Hanji understands why Petra felt so inclined to assert herself. They can believe that the Petra displayed to the biters was not the true Petra, because they know that in reality, she is deathly afraid of what they can do, not confident in her own ability to fight against them alone.

Despite the cruelness to Hanji’s beautiful new test subjects, they don’t despise her for being rude. It only made Petra more human, more unlike the PDS patients than they had realised before. The definition of humanity is fear, and those that are fearless are the ones to be tossed aside.

 

 

 

\-- 

_Fear is real. Fear is an understandable, rational feeling that stems from instinct. Instinct is based on the desire to survive, the desire to preserve life. If a person does not contain the will to contain life, then they die. Simple. The dead feel no need to carry on surviving, because survival is not important. They are dead. Death is the opposite of life. So, if a person is dead and also reanimated- as the PDS sufferers are- does this mean that they are living people who lack the will to survive? Does this mean that, despite displaying many of the major characteristics with normal people, they are not? Is death an inconceivable factor that divides the humanity from those who have to be removed?_

_Is the living-death of a PDS sufferer the soul reason why they cannot be treated as regular people? Think about it. They are dead. There is no need for survival because of that fact. There is nothing to protect, no life to preserve. Instinct, therefore, does not dictate that they try to conserve their life. If they have no need to conserve life, then they do not become frightened for their life- they do not experience fear._

_I then hypothesise that the Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferers are, in fact, not actually human. Whilst tests are yet to prove otherwise, there is evidence to support my theory either way. However, I sincerely hope that my more optimistic outlook is true, or else we may have a larger problem on our hands than we first realised._

_\--_

 

Marco cannot tell how long he has waited for the leering doctor. Perhaps it has been mere minutes, perhaps an hour. He cannot tell.

All he knows is that the room he is in is rather unpleasant. Whilst not unclean (in fact, the cleanliness was rather impeccable) the whole tiny box was dark, windowless. The floor is the same grey, porous metal, walls a similar dank ash. A bench hangs drown from the far end, held up by thin but strong chains, an insubstantial and plastic mattress attached to the surface by four Velcro straps that wind underneath the metal and keeps the blue sheet in place.

This is where Marco sits, staring impatiently at the door as he waits for the doctor, and tracing the lines of yellow light that dimly stripe the walls and leave faint impressions on his vision.

The pressure changes. A solid electric passes through the small dorm, stiffening the air in a way that closes around Marco, his clothes cloying his skin like starch. It creaks, bows under the rubber squeal of the doors seal, then, without warning, the air gushes out in a roaring wave; a drawing, pulling force that whips Marco's short, evenly parted hair across his forehead, tugging weakly at the parka and the hem of his jeans. The light grows, but only from the single dim slit to a pathway of orange that grows from one wall to the next, dulled by a figure that stands in the way of the beam.

He blinks, readjusting his vision to the drowning bright in an attempt to focus on the doorway. The distance seems flat, as though he could reach out his hand and grasp the figure, and yet he knows the distance is too large to do so. Marco knows that the floor falls away and grows lighter the closer it comes to the figure, yet there is not focusing on the individual spaces. It becomes a whole, an entire mass that obviously layers, yet looks so flat- like pieces of paper stacked roughly on one another. The edge of his knees, the tips of his outstretched feet, the shrinking bobbles in the floor... They sit in a pile without definitive distance. It is all flat.

As if realising that Marco is struggling to focus, the figure moves forward; stepping into the light and allowing the light to pass over their outline. Franctic hair forms, tinged red in the light, circular goggles clinging to the light, despite not facing any surface from which the sickly yellow could be reflected from.

“Ah good,” the voice sighs, “I was worried you’d changed since I left you for so long.”  Three steps are taken, and the figure of the doctor is outlined further. Marco takes in their angular face, so glad to see that there is barely an ounce of fear or hatred- more like an intense excitement that is palpable and tingling.  It almost makes him want to choke with relief. Despite the rest of the people that had guided him to his cell, this one was particularly decent. Of course, words were exchanged that he rather hadn’t been, yet with the doctor it doesn’t seem rude. In fact, he believes it stems from a lack of understanding, and he can forgive that.

He smiles weakly, acknowledging the poor humour from the doctor. Instead of replying, shoulders shift into a small shrug, and Marco leans forward, dragging himself to the edge of the small bed. “I’m ready when you are.”

The words are simple, truthful. Marco is unabashed about his condition, the droning repetition now concrete in his mind. Time and time again he has told himself that being a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer is not something to be ashamed of, that he is normal- bar, of course, the obvious factors of his silent heart and deathly pale stare. The small, sensitive catheter underneath the top knuckle of his spine is proof of that. It separates him, definitely, yet he knows that it is the key to his salvation. The blue tube is the only reason he does not have a bullet in his skull, the reason he isn’t burnt to ashes.

He bows onto his lap, resting his head on clenched knees, breathing deeply through the memory of what is to come. The doctor moves closer, tracing fingers down his back. They ply at the neck of his clothes. It teases, bares the pinprick-oceanic hole that sits directly below the base of his neck.

Marco knows the fingers are there. It is something about the pressure on his skin that tells him; there is not warmth to indicate their presence, no feeling that tells them what it is; only the assumption of contact and the knowing he has gained from past experience. They continue to trace, following the river-flow of electric jags that zip from the central pit of aching blue that curves in a raised bolt from Marco's right shoulder to the catheter. With every moment, numbness grows. It flourishes a breathing flame, numbing and darkly freezing his skin with oozing poison that seems to slick his skin and keep a defiant layer between the cooing doctor and him. The feeling is unrelenting, spreading across the other veins that run down his spine in current waves of pulsating energy- unpleasant, unwelcome, tense with imploding power that crawls over him in shocking waves.

Then. Then the doctor reaches the hole. Here it is the most numbingly-sensitive. Chilled metal expands the catheter and tugs on the edges of the hole in a raw burn. Marco gasps at the sensation, biting his fingers into the musty grey of his jeans, tearing automatically through the fabric to attempt to claw at his own skin, wanting some sort of relief from the hot expansion and vice-like grip that holds his shoulder. It burns, it burns so much, something he knows he has to have, something just so disgustingly painful that sometimes he wished he could pull away and pretend that he doesn't need it. For those few seconds in which the needle burrowing into open flesh, worming and wiggling to find a perfect position, Marco is in hell.

"Are you ready?" The doctor asks, and Marco whimpers through the shock.

_Pch._

A simple sound. A tiny tut from the glass and metal. It scolds every time, as though each time the injection is administered, it likes to remind of the bad things they have done. _Tut to you for hurting people, tut to you for your lack of control. Tut tut tut! I hope that you are happy with yourself, murderer, killer, cannibal, biter, rotter, walker, thing, monster... Tut to you, tut to you all!_

It is all he can hear. The constant whoosh of blasted, tainted air races through him and drags him through the pitch black of memory.

He stares in the ground. An eye opens, yet all he can see is nothing. Is there panic? Is there fear? All Marco knows is that he has to get out. There is desperation burning in his chest alongside a raw hunger that keeps coming, ebbing and flowing alongside the manic kicks and punches he throws out, breaking through dank wood and tearing the scrap of paper placed above his head; words, letters, a name and a photo all gone in blind escape.

And then it starts. The soil. Damp. Threads. Hands claw. He growls. He digs and digs until he can swear there are more stones biting into his skin. Darkness still prevails, but now it lessens, almost brown to him, almost adjusting to the slowly stretching tunnel. At first he can only stick out a fist, then it grows to an arm, which circles the hole to widen its girth. As the earth dribbles down onto his face, onto his open eye and into his mouth and nose, he relishes in the thought of leaving the darkness and leaving the confines to follow whatever nervous pull propels him to step out from the comfort of the dark.

Once he creates something around a foot wide, he adjusts, reaching himself up so that he sits in the hole. Then it grows quickly. Arms not only dig, but they punch and pull harshly on the ground above. It stretches, he does the same. They grow together, the hole and he, rising through the gravel that is pushed underneath him beneath his clambering feet.

Then he comes to it. A flimsy layer, furry with roots and dry dirt.

It is almost a relief. He places his left palm against it, testing the thickness, the pressure that weighs against him. Something inside him judges how much it will take to pierce. The palm retracts. It balls, and he looks to it.

And then there is air. Fresh, sweet. The palm is free, the palm sits in the air, the palm no longer knows the tearing panic of the ground. It opens out, searching the solid surface for a way into the open, ending up with a large circle that reveals something flat and spotted.

The sky.

It shouldn't be so good. Yet it is. The cool breath, the perfect stillness of the night. He grapples the edges, feet digging into wet earth and back arching into the new ground. More arms grow from the grave, and he watches them do it. Two are very close, both to his left side, and there is another in front whose fingers are poking through.

Nothing much happens for him, he sits, listens to the world and takes in the few others that stand and follow an unspoken trail. It is there for him too, a passing vibration that makes him want to stand.

Clambering, he tries.

He falls.

The others fade into the distance, turning around a hedged corner to the sound of something pumping and buzzing. Wanting to do the same, he stands again... And falls once more.

_Why is this so difficult? Why can't he stand? Why can't he go?_

Perhaps not then, but now, in the four thick walls of something akin to a prison cell, he knows; something that hadn't bothered him in the grave had caused him trouble from the moment he had stood. His eye, the singular of something that should be coupled, was gone. It was disorienting to not see half of the world, to stare at the curve of his nose constantly. In all honesty it was unbalancing, and he had seen and experienced that first hand. Then it had been hard to get a bearing. Now, it was just as difficult, but he has grown to get used to it.

He tries to stand, to open his eye and see the world come into focus; yet it darkens, cools, become smaller and bleaker with every moment, every useless blink furthering the realisation that there is no sky above him, nor grass below. It is just metal and grey and darkness. Nothing more except the reality of his new world.

Marco is back. He lies on his stomach across the floor, the doctor gone, arms and legs outstretched into unseeable darkness. Groaning, he doesn't even attempt to stand. Instead he shuffles, pushing past the tight pinch in his head to try and lean back against the metal frame of the makeshift bed with his legs stretched out in front of him. Breath comes and goes, and he finds it useless yet comforting to take such shaking breaths, many too deep or too shallow, but all not needed.

The world is blurred, but he can still see the door. Unremarkably, it is shut, yet there is a tiny window in the metal, glass peering through to him. The glasses shift, a damp groan leak through the metal and into the cell. At once the doctor talks, their speech muffled but understandable. Marco focuses on it, taking in the words if he cannot take in anything else. It is barely audible, but to him it is the clearest thing in the room, beating down the fuzzy vision and blinding spots of residual darkness tainting the centre of his vision. Marco focuses on it, and hold the dregs until he can understand the drabble of language that has rooted him in the return to the chemical past.

"Petra, please remind me to restrain number seven next time. It bites. Over."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If there is one song you look the lyrics up for this year, make it [this one](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/cartel/wasted.html). It's so deceptively happy, it's like listening to Hollywood Undead's Bullet. When I first listened to it I was like "aw this is really cute" and then I listened and actually cried because oh gosh what is this it's so sad.... As my friend said "social commentary to the sound of a high-school marching band." Plus it's a bit Panic! at the Disco, and it reminded me so much of being fifteen again I couldn't help it.
> 
> The next chapter will be a bit late. As I posted for a few days on Stutter, I'm at a festival for a few days before moving house almost immediately after. This means the time between this chapter and the next will be extended, although after that I'm free from college and so should be able to do a lot more writing, so chapters may come between every seven to ten days.
> 
> (FYI I'm lazy and didn't check this chapter through properly, so some of it may be bullshit. I'll sort it tomorrow. I'm too tired and I want ice cream.)
> 
> Thank you so much for the Kudos', you wonderful people. 
> 
> See you next time.


	4. "It is sown corruptible; it is raised incorruptible. It is sown dishonorable; it is raised glorious. It is sown weak; it is raised powerful. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Listen- [(Thrice- Digging My Own Grave )](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wp7d_kgxI0)
> 
>    
>  _Oh, don't I know, I'm just digging my own grave,_  
>  _Someone else please save myself from me._  
>  _And oh, Lord I know, I'm just digging my own grave._  
>  _Can someone save myself from me?_

Three knocks sound. Stubborn, determined; _much like the owner_ , Hanji thinks, swiping their index finger along the crescents dimpled into their desk and contemplating how many mugs had been placed in the exact same ebony arch.

“Come in,” they call without taking their eye away from the spot fixed precisely to the left of their dark rainbow. The door opens slowly as they do this. Bristled carpet scrapes against wood alongside the muffled footsteps of the people Hanji had called into their office, awkwardly pushing their way through together. Hanji smiles, “you’re late.”

There are two huffs, one from each person, both dissimilar and yet sharing so many characteristics instilled into them, so deeply set in their person that it is hard to shake out their likeness. Only one of them talks, voice low and slightly annoyed- but Hanji knows there is no threat from it. Not now, anyway. “We got held up in section nine. Levi had a problem.”

Hanji finally looks up to the voice. Eren stands, hands in the pockets of his khaki uniform, belt looped around the middle to keep the mostly undone buttons from exposing anything past the sweat-stained white vest underneath the various shades of beige and grey, reflecting the warmth of his skin and oaken hair. Behind stands a slightly taller Jean, hazel eyes distantly searching the papers on Hanji’s desk.

He is not dressed the same, grey sweatpants hanging low on his waist, exposing the bandages that run across his hips, only barely hidden by the black hoodie that is rolled up at the sleeves to expose his forearms; pale and thin, cracked blue veins running from his hand to the elbow and emerging up the sides of his neck. His ash blond hair is dirty, greasy, and leading down to shallow, unshaven cheeks and a tight jaw. Jean is gaunt, unhealthy and practically shaking at room temperature. The watching glower passes over everything. It is untrusting- but only recently coming to be so- looking from Hanji to Eren to the papers in blatant disgust, as though everything else were filthy, not him.

“What was Levi’s problem?” Hanji can feel the corners of their lips turn up in a light smile. They already knew the answer; but Hanji just wants to see Eren pass the same teasing look. To get to Hanji’s office, the duo had to pass through section nine, Levi’s domain, and anything awry came to the squad leader’s attention exceptionally quickly. That was increasingly true for dirt, something that Jean seemed to be covered in, tiny scraps of something disgusting clinging to the grey, filthy trainers that peeps out from underneath the baggy sweats, the sole falling away into a gaping mouth, and mud sticking to the hem of every item of clothing on his frail body.

“Jean was Levi’s problem. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

There is a crack. Eren jumps forwards, hands flying to the base of his spine. Jean’s arm pulls away. Red handed.

“I’m nobody’s fucking problem, got that?” he hisses.

Hanji sighs. “It’s just a joke, Jean, calm the fuck-“

“You are such a cunt.” Spittle flies from Eren’s lips, the displeased grimace shifting ominously, “no wonder Ami-“

“Don’t bring this up in front of Jean,” the doctor’s voice lowers, threatening the pair that face each other, almost growling, baring teeth in pressurised anger that grows and spirals them both.

 Jean burrows his teeth into the back of his lips. He begins to taste blood. The teal eyes in front of him burn, something deep behind the teasing bullshit. He hopes it is an apology, yet he still cannot take the embers of a true. That name, the one that has been said over and over in this same office feels sullied. He wants to escape it, cleanse the name and leave into the open that gives him so much release from the dank confines of memory. Jean wants to run, and so he tries, turning to his squad leader and shaking his head shortly. “I’m done here. Talk to Eren before I knock his teeth in. I’m goin’ home.”

Hanji stands, extending a limp arm to the man that has grabbed the door handle. “Don’t. I need to talk to you both.” But Jean doesn’t stop, pulling the door open. They sigh, knowing that they have to; they need to talk to them both now. “If you don’t stop now I’m stopping our sessions, got it?”

Jean stands. The door is already open, already awaiting his departure but he does not take it. “You… You can’t fucking do that,” he chokes, “you owe me them. You fucking owe me.”

“I know. That’s why you need to stay. Just… just stay.” Hanji sits back down, indicating to the chairs that sit on the opposite side of her desk. They can see Jean’s shoulders drooping in resignation, and they finally relax, knowing that he is too weak to refuse, too upset to do anything other than comply. “Sit down please.”

The two men do as they are told, taking one seat each. Eren pulls his chair out to the right, lengthening the distance between him and Jean, who shuffles around, attempting to lean back and avoid scrunching up the area covered in a slightly greying bandage.

Eren is the first one to talk, cutting through the silence that fills the metallic box room. “Can we get this over and done with?”

Hanji breathes a sigh of relief at his casual tone, passing over a handful of the documents scattered across their desk. Eren removes them from their hand, passing a couple over to Jean who briefly looks to the top one before looking at the wall. “You know about the biters, right?” Eren nods, ignoring the way the other man has all but blanked himself from the conversation, “well, the basics of it is we need help. We currently have twenty-two in the facility. That number is likely to rise within the next week- another clinic in Wales has agreed to give us another fifteen. But at the moment it’s just me and Moblit looking after them all, doing the injections and all that crap. But there’s a problem.”  Hanji pushes up their slipping glasses and their vision focuses once more.

Jean snorts, ignoring the tear sitting in his eyelashes. “Don’t tell me you want us to help experiment on them?” His eye stay to the wall, but Hanji ignores it, shuffling the few papers left on their desk and handing them to Eren, who flicks through the bunch quickly.

“Sort of. Since I’ve been the one administering injections, I haven’t been able to observe their reaction to the drug. There are a few I’m particularly interested in. So I need you, Eren, to administer injections, and I need Jean to act as technician so I can take readings and Moblit can sketch.”

Papers are slapped into the desk, the chair Jean sits on slipping back. “I ain’t goin’ near them. Sorry, but I can’t do that. So I quit okay, see ya later Hanji, I’m fucking out.”

“Shut the fuck up Kirschtein,” groans the doctor, running one hand down their face in annoyance, “this isn’t a God damn choice. You’re doing it whether you want to or not. So stop acting like a prick and suck it up. I need your help, and you’re part of my squad, so you follow my orders, got it? And I know this is gonna be difficult for you, but they’re people now. Fucked up people, yeah, but we have to deal with them… in here and outside. So either you get used to it or you’re really gonna struggle to look one in the eye when you have to.”

The blond shakes his head. He drapes an arm over his shoulder scratching loosely at the base of his neck, pursing his lips. He can’t. Jean just cannot do it, see the face of someone _anyone_ who could have done it, could have killed her or anyone else like her. Jean just can’t.

“You can’t make me do this,” he repeats out loud. “You can’t Hanji… you said that you… don’t make me.”

Hanji sighs sympathetically. “I have to. You can’t patrol, you can’t do training. So you have to do this. And I promise that it will be worth it. It will help you.” Hanji smiles weakly, tapping the last few papers in front of them. “Now, can you please look to the documents?”

Eren eagerly looks to the paper, flicking through and scanning each one intently. He takes in every face, every age and place of burial. Most are close, some horrifyingly so. Ones from towns close to here, some for places he had been to, or places colleagues and friends had come from. There seemed to be so many; an army for an army, all camped out in the same building, something Jean only recently knew about, having been off the radar for such a long time.

Jean doesn’t care. He sits, blank, looking without true care through the paper whilst Hanji and Eren do the same with care. They sit and look at each case, whereas Jean just looks to the photo, hoping to not see someone he recognises, hoping not to see a place too close to home. He does, and it terrifies him, looking to the stamp that covers the face of a few photos; some red, others blue.

“What do the stamps mean?” Eren asks, putting forward the question Jean wanted to know but wanted to appear too aloof to ask.

“The red ones all suffer from extreme reactions to neurotripteline, the blue has a connection with the Undead Liberation Army, and will need to be befriended in order for me to get Blue Oblivion samples,” explains Hanji, who drops the papers and claps a couple of times, “this is going to be so exciting. I have a few theories I want to test out, but I want to explain them to you now but… It might take a while.”

Eren shrugs, “I’ve not got much else to do. I suppose we need to know.”

“That’s the spirit!” they cry, before picking up the files again and shuffling through, bringing the red ones to the top. Hanji clips the edge with their finger, fanning them out lightly before bringing it back. “The first theory is that PDS sufferers have different reactions based on area. Now, this might be something to do with the soil, or perhaps there is an influence area… maybe climate or soil pollutants. For instance, most of the patients we have here who suffer from extreme reactions- eight in all- are from Essex, ranging from between Saffron Walden to Southend-On-Sea. The closest ones to Colchester come from Easthorpe and Maldon, whilst the furthest away is Harlow, close to the London border. The only one that suffers from extreme reactions from outside the area is from Devon, and it is believed he suffered from anger issues before his death, which may influence results.”

“Wait, which one is from Easthorpe?” Jean perks up, eyes questioning.

“Number seven, although he wasn’t found close-by, and not until over a month ago. Whilst his reaction is more extreme than most, we don’t believe he was actually capable of attacking anyone whilst in the state he was in.” Hanji removes the files with red stamps from their hands, putting them on the desk and smiling brightly again, white teeth peering out eerily. “My second theory is that PDS sufferers have increased brain function at the time of injection. Now, this got me thinking that perhaps an overdose of neurotripteline may cause the body to come back to life entirely, and so bring a PDS sufferer back to their original state of life before their death. This could prove tricky if it is true. Patients that had died from disease or cancer could never be reanimated, as could people with instantly fatal injuries as they would just die immediately all over again. However, cases like drowning, suicide, extreme blood loss, asphyxiation or heart problems… they could all have a second chance if the injection is given whilst they are hooked up onto the appropriate machinery. I have a line-up of subjects that would be suitable for testing, mostly because if it is successful, then those would be the ones we would survive their injuries. Those ones are on the list labelled ‘Second Chancers’ on the back sheet.”

“And lastly,” Hanji continues, “I want to see what the effects of Blue Oblivion are on someone who doesn’t suffer from PDS. And I want Eren to test it for me.”

Jean looks to Eren. Eren looks to Hanji. His teal eyes are wide, questioning.

“Why me?” He asks.

Hanji leans back in their chair, grinning like a madman. “You heal extremely well, and your blood type is common and in stock within the facility. On top of that, your vitals are very pronounced, in such a sense that they are easily traceable. We already have a lot of your medical records here, so we know a lot about you. For instance, at rest your heart rates is always steady, at sixty-eight when at rest and at work it increases at an even rate, ending up unusually high. This is a common feature among army personnel, as many cope with particularly high stress levels for extended periods. And you have no allergies, suffered no broken bones or had any major diseases, and all of your shots are up to date. Plus, your resolve is massive, and mentally, you can cope with quite a lot.” The doctor sighs, “of course, you won’t be the only one. Two biters have also agreed to the treatment. But they are most likely going to have to be taken out. It’s a real shame, but for science, it’s worth it. I’ve hypothesised that the reaction will most likely not be the same, and all I can think of is that your sense will be heightened. It might just have similar effects to other class A drugs, like ketamine or ecstasy whereas they may never be reformed to the point they are now, although we will try to bring them back. Biters aren’t people we can afford to lose.”

“This is insane,” Jean wines. His voice cracks, the rough of his throat finally catching up to his speech as his tone rises, “I know you do dumb shit, but this… this is… it’s fucked up. You can’t expect Eren to do that, and you can’t expect me to piss around with rotters.”

The papers are gone from Hanji’s hand. They scatter across the desk, jolting as two hands rock the dark wood as the whole thing is pushed towards the two men. Hanji stands. Their glasses glint in the light and the reflection catches Jean’s eye, causing him to scowl further into the stare. They talk through gritted teeth, a mouth full of pent-up frustration directed at their subordinate’s stubbornness. “I can and I will make you. Eren doesn’t have to do take Blue Oblivion, but right now the only other option is Levi, and he’s too precious an asset for us to fuck around with. So either Eren does it, or we find some random, suicidal little cunt that will.”

“No, I’ll do it.” Eren kicks himself from his chair and stands. It scrapes, but he ignores the piercing squeal, adjusting the cuff of his right sleeve so that it sits in the crevice of his elbow. The glint of innocence is gone, all revealing of the far-away scowl that takes over in his desperation. Jean and Hanji know where this leads; to an unbelievable resolve that ends only when the job is done, regardless of injury or outcome. “If you want me to do it, then I volunteer. Let me know when you want to try it out and I’ll be there.”

“You’re an idiot.” Eren turns as Jean mutters under his breath. His face stays flat, skin pale and wavering under the words, yet his eyes glint darkly. They spark with knowing horror that Eren just cannot see, fuelling a cold fire that sits in waiting. “You’re an idiot for thinking that it will help, and you’re an idiot for believing that it will be something other than just suicide. It’s going to hurt you, and you can’t even get over that because you’re too blind-sighted by your own damn dream of getting her back to how she was.”

Eren huffs. “I’m doing it because I want every chance to get Mikasa back to how she was before, yes. But you don’t see it, Jean, you don’t see how in pain she is without even trying. I’ve been with her for too long not to see that she hates herself for how-“

“She’s dead." Jean punctuates. His fists clam shut.  "How can you not see that? They died because their hearts stopped fucking beating. And we stuck them in the ground because that is where the dead belong. If we don’t get a second chance, why do they?”

“Does Mikasa not deserve a second chance?” Eren feels himself grow cold.

Jean swipes his arm, random item flying and hitting the wall with a thud. He seeths, rough voice growling through clacked teeth and stiff lips. “She died. When has anyone else that deserved it been given another go at living. So why does she? Why doesn’t Amilie? Why won’t you, or why won’t I?”

“Mikasa is so alive. More alive than you are now. She tries so hard to live, and all you want to do is remember that people die. Because that’s all you care about now, death. There’s nothing else for you and it’s disgusting. Don’t take away Mikasa’s chance at surviving just because you don’t want to believe the world can change, or that people can live without having to worry about dying all the time. If Hanji needs me to try this stupid drug, then fuck I’m gonna try it. Because that’s what they need me to do, and I need to do it if it means that I can make Mikasa happy again, to get the world to go back to how is should be.”

“Get out Eren. Get the fuck out and leave me alone. Go and fuck your dead wife and be fucking happy.” Eren stiffens. Anger builds in his chest, yet he has learnt to push it down, save it. Instead he gulps and purses his lips in a show of tenacity. Silence prevails until the doctor plucks up the nerve to shatter gaseous shards of glass.

Hanji sighs, “I’ll see you tomorrow at 7.”

Eren nods, taking one final glance to Jean, the blond man with his head in his hands, shaking slightly. He goes to leave, only sniffing slightly at he opens the door and a gush of fresh air rushes in.

“Look at his stomach, I can smell infection.” And he leaves, blinking knowingly at Hanji before shutting the door behind him.

The room is filled with the sounds of erratic breathing muffled through fabric, but Hanji knows there is little they can do but let Jean wallow for a few moments. They stand, walking around the desk and placing a hand on Jean’s shoulder as they pass before following Eren and walking out of the room with a low “I’ll get the alcohol.”

Jean is left with his thoughts.

 

 

 

 --

_It’s your fault it’s your fault it’s your fault it’s your fault it’s your fault it’s your fault it’s your fault it’s your fault it’s your fault it’s your fault it’s my fault it’s your fault it’s your fault it’s your fault it’s your fault it’s your fault it’s my fault it’s your fault it’s your fault it’s your fault it’s my fault it’s your fault it’s your fault it’s your fault it’s my fault it’s your fault it’s my  fault it’s my fault it’s your fault it’s my fault it’s my fault it’s my fault it’s all my fault I’m so sorry, I’m so damn sorry I couldn’t save you, or be the one who took it all away, or been the one to hold your hand, or known who did it, found the one that did it and I’m sorry that I let you join, and I’m sorry I didn’t push for you to be in my squad, and I’m sorry they didn’t give you enough bullets and I didn’t shoot the bastard for you, I didn’t say goodbye. It’s my fault, isn’t it Amilie? I’m the one who killed you. I wasn't strong enough. I should have I should have I could have done it but I didn’t and now you’re not here and I’m alone and you’re never coming back and I can’t do that. How can they do that? How could they let you die? How could I let you die by someone else’s hand? Why wasn’t I there? What was I doing? It’s all me, it’s me, Amilie, I did it, it’s my fault you’re gone. It’s all my fault it’s all my fault, all my fault, my fault all mine mine my fault all mine my fault my fault my my my fault all mine all my fault my fault it’s my fault it’s my fault my fault all my fault all my fault it’s all my fault it’s all my fault it’s all my fault it’s my fault my fault I’m sorry my fault all my fault it’s all my all my fault my-_

_\--_

 

 

“Do you want to talk about what you’re thinking?” Hanji puts the gauze and rubbing alcohol down on the desk, voice lowered into a hoarse whisper. Jean shakes his head.

“You know what I’m thinking. I’ve told you it all already. One more time won’t make the difference.” He groans, leaning back into the chair, stitches briefly catching on the taught fabric of the bandage wrapped around his waist. It burns; the crevasse wound curves in infection, still unhealed. Lord only knows how many weeks it had been festering under bandages that rubbed against bruised skin, disease coming back again and again to throw him back into convulsing illness. He hasn’t been counting. Despite their best efforts, all that is done is crude stitches that cannot pull the wound together, edges turning sour even through the antibiotics, painkillers, and daily washes in fiery alcohol that do nothing to stop the constant trickle of blood or the searing pain of pale yellow gunk. 

The doctor leans onto the desk, picking up the bottle and unscrewing the cap with two fingers. Jean takes this as a cue to lift the hem of his hoodie up over his head, cursing under his breath at the tug on the bite. He removes one arm then the other and unceremoniously throws the black mass onto the floor. The sweatpants are pulled down next, but only until the entirety of the bandage is revealed to the doctor.

Hanji kneels down to the left side of the chair. “How many painkillers did you take?” they ask, unpinning the bandage and, with one hand, pushing Jean from his leaning position so that they can reach around his back to curl the dirty bandage back up.

“Five. Four wasn’t enough last night.” The bandages are wound down further. Underneath is a row of gauze pads stacked on top of one another. The first few appear clean, yet with every layer spatters of brown and sticky green seep through. Hanji winces.

“Don’t take any more than that. We can’t have you unconscious… I’m surprised you aren’t already.” They sigh a quick, pained laugh, smiling gently but briefly into the silence. Hanji tends to go serious when working with people, Jean always thinks, although he and everyone else on the team knew that changed when it came to three things- guns, walkers and science. Cuts, however deep they may be, was not their forte, although Jean isn’t so sure that the bubbling infection he can see seeping through the cracks between dark stitches aren’t something Hanji would be interested in. The pus that drips down his stomach flicks with dark specks of something rotten, and Hanji’s eyes go wide, maniacal under the glasses. “Holy fuck… I need to rip these out.”

“That bad?”

“It just won’t heal,” they murmur to themselves, “maybe there’s something in the saliva that…”

They trail off, picking at the stitches until they fall loose and they pull it out with a sharp tug. Despite the drugs, Jean winces. “Do you need me to go to a prep room?”

“Moblit’s injecting biters in there, we can’t use it now. Damn it, I’m just going to have to clean it out here. Stand up Kirschtein.” Hanji stands, putting the cap back on the bottle and placing it on the floor. They quickly shuffle the papers on the desk before piling them next to the bottle and topping it off with the items they keep scattered across the surface; a laptop, the cable, a snow-globe and several coloured-vortex paperweights, a collection of small animal skulls, an anatomical mannequin used for drawing, two pictures of the squad on their tour to Iraq three months before The Rising started, and a Slinky bent out of shape next to the die from a Magic-8-Ball. Lastly went the bandage, a small piece ripped off and soaked in alcohol before being wiped against the table, removing the dirt that had been sitting underneath the ornaments for quite some time.

Jean rises, shaking at the familiar pain which stabbing across his abdomen. The distance from the chair to the desk is not far, and yet the few steps feel unreasonably wide when the gaping hole slashed into his muscle burns dry and feels wet all at the same time. He lies back against it, sighing at the release of pressure although the twinge remains.

“I’m going to have to take all the stitches out, clean the whole wound, remove any dead flesh and then bandage it all up again. I only have a local anaesthetic on hand though, so don’t look at the wound.” Hanji looks through the drawers. Inside, as always, is a supply of medical equipment that the doctor seems to physically carry around wherever they go. Luckily for Jean, it also seems that they bring it to work.

Out of the disorganised drawer appears a small pair of scissors, a pack of gauze and a numbing cream and spray. Hanji immediately starts on the stitches, knowing that the small tugging pain is nothing compared to the heated throb of the bite wound. They constantly hiss, yet the demonic smile remains. Sometimes Hanji’s mouth flicks into a grin before a dark piece of flesh is put on a scrap of gauze.

“This is disgustingly fascinating,” they comment, scissors deep in Jean’s stomach. “Okay, last one.”

The release is immense, the sensation somewhere between blinding pain and the ache of a stiff muscle. Jean can feel the two sides pulling away from one another and the gurgling slime dripping hotly onto his stomach. To know that it is still there repulses him, and yet he is so used to it that it no longer bothers him as much as it once had. Just after the incident, he hated the pain, coupled with the terrible memory that accompanied those few moments. At first, it had been more, so much more, and he let himself drown in the blood and the flurry or arms that kept him alive with more machines than he ever knew what to do with, more wires than necessary. Everyone had thought he was a dead man.

And yet he had been through worse.

 _Injuries heal,_ he realised in the midst of an induced coma, _but you always remember their cause_. The people he had seen torn limb from limb by a flurry of bullets, the heat that had left people bleeding then cauterised in the sand, the dehydration and the madness… the death of his baby sister next at the altar of a tiny church with a bullet in her skull, although not from her own gun- or his. He would remember them for as long as he kept his mind. One day, he would forget how disgusting he feels now; but in ten years or twenty or maybe even fifty, he would still remember her scream.

Primal, raw. The thing humans use to voice in languageless words that they are in danger. Instinct replies to it, and suddenly the body ebbs with the tide of adrenaline that rolls upstream until all that is visible is red. Red in the fury, red in the anger, red in the blood and the pain and the lust for death and destruction you feel when such things are shed in vain. Everything is heightened in such a way that all things are perfectly preserved, and yet it all seems to go so fast and slow at the same time, it can almost be a dream- a fantastically abhorrent dream that leaves Jean crying in the night, too afraid that if he closes his eyes once more, he can see her face.

And in her face, he can see his. He can see his mother’s face and his father’s face in her dead eyes, the ones who died in the first day of The Rising, the ones who left the house Jean had received from the Army to return to their own home after a visit for just one night. Their last night, eating takeaway fish and chips in greasy paper surrounded by three empty bottles of Heinz tomato ketchup and a bottle of brown sauce, because “Dad is the only one who actually likes that crap.”

They were the ones who rang him three hours later with their dying words.

“Thank the Lord that she is with you…”

A sigh. A cry. A scream. A growl and the sound of tearing flesh hitting the concrete with ridiculous force. The shout of “DEAR GOD SAVE US” from the stairs as one battered down the door and headed for her.

Thank fuck for guns, right?

If not, Jean would never have forgiven himself for that moment. He thanks his lucky stars that he could save her once, because despite her illegal proficiency with a gun, she didn’t have it on her. Her .22 calibre pistol lay under her pillow, just in case of a moment that never really came in his household. Except for that one moment.

Even after that, she never touched it. She never went home, staying at the dorms of the Garrison for two months as Jean periodically went home to collect clothes and pictures, every time finding at least one walker that stumbled in from the graveyard only fifty meters from the front door. He shot them all between the dead of their eyes. Fifty-fifty in the centre of their skulls.

Easy and painless. Merciful. That was what he was.

And then the day came. “Happy birthday…” followed by “you’re a real great shot... say, how about patrolling with your big bro tonight?” and because he had managed to lip a few beers from Moblit, and something else from Sasha, he’d said okay.

It went great. That was that. Fifteen and practically already in the army; and unlike her big brother, touching the stars with her grades, set for that one fucking college with all of the rick pricks in it. “Seriously,” he had told her as she came back home with the millionth piece of paper labelled with full marks,  “if I was as much of a smart-ass as you, I’d fuck all the dorky kids in my free periods. Smart, funny and fucking adorable, they'd love you. Come on! The ratio is messed up at the grammar sixth form. It’s like twenty dicks for every cunt, and I swear, hey! Don’t you laugh. I’m seriously here, most guys are bi if you just tell them to close their eyes, okay? I know my shit. But a stunner like you would literally be poppin’ boners left right and centre… and they probably all have weird kinks too, like tentacle porn and BSDM, ‘cause I bet you’d totally be into that.”

“You’re so fucked up, seriously!” But then she’d smile and Jean would know that although he had totally messed up the one math question she had asked for help with, and didn’t care that he had just made fun of her for the black choker she kept around her wrist to cover scars. It didn’t matter. She was safe, reasonably happy despite the death of her parents and the state of the world.

She took it out on the biter-death-count, sitting up with Jean, Eren and Levi at the top, all commanded by Erwin back at base and surrounded by a group of people much older and more experienced looking after her, and in return she had given them youthful hope that someday they would win, and some day they could do the trip they planned on where they all went to Disneyland and pretended that walkers didn’t eat people, or that husbands don’t shoot their families before offing themselves in fear of what their lives would be now that they were on the last tin of beans and with no running water in their crumble-down home.

He had been so damn lucky he had somewhere to take her, and they had been so damn lucky to have her in return. Everything had been easier with her; Eren shared her passion, Petra her kindness, Hanji the brainiac side of the girl, Erwin the tactician that came out whenever Monopoly was taken down from the top shelf, Levi the shit jokes, and- of course- Jean, that she shared everything else with from the colour of their hair to their light hazel eyes and angular face. And if that wasn’t enough, the same slightly rough voice in different octaves (although Jean’s was mostly due to cigarettes whist hers… probably also Jean’s cigarettes) and the same period of complete depression just after her thirteenth birthday that left them both with memories they’d rather forget, scars that never faded and Jean’s playlist that was passed down from one sibling to another that had brought them out, kicking and screaming, from the brink of a desert and a school yard and into the help they found in each other.

If nothing else, they were close. Jean stuck up for her more than anyone else because they belonged to each other- family- and one could barely live without the other. He was the body and she the mind.

And then she died.

Before that point, Jean believed that rotters didn’t think. They were a walking corpse with no intelligence that bathed in blood. She thought differently, believing that the mind was there and functioning perfectly in its own way, yet the body couldn’t respond to it as a normal person would.

It wasn’t until the day of her death that he agreed with her. After all, she wasn’t the one who was most susceptible. They just chose her because they knew _they knew_ that she was the glue, and after glue crumbles into ash, all that is left is cracks and the pain falling apart causes.

It started well. Easthorpe. A tiny village of barely a few hundred people spread out over one long road leading from the A12 to barely even Refectory Wood, just a few miles away. Tiny, teeny tiny. But somehow it was madness.

Entering from Easthorpe Road, Jean went north, across the horse racing track to bypass the empty houses and head to the back of the Saint Mary the Virgin Church. Peace is something rare in the world, and yet here it is, so unusual and unnerving. Quiet is key, yet ominous when he looks for a noise that may indicate a target. And it went well, as planned and only the occasional beep of the intercom from base, or the sound of Eren just a few meters ahead encouragingly making sweet progress across the field.

They hide behind the hedge, waiting. Now, Jean can hear bodies. They shuffle, moan, hum and growl in the chaotic chorus of the new world.

“There are more than we thought.” A voice sighs, barely surpassing the crackle of static.

“How many, Corporal?” Eren swallows loudly.

“A hoard. Triple our troupes, easily.”  Jean cannot remember how many had been there that day, although considering a mixture of Hanji and Levi's troupe members went in, three cars with about six in each; the number was closer to fifty. They float down the road, huddle in the grass, lean on walls and on the trunks of battered trees. They weren’t from there, obviously, but Colchester was close, as was a major road and a few villages with several churches. The most unusual thing was the fact that they swarmed like flies to the one spot, hanging around the church as though something waited inside.

That was the reason they were there.

It started soon after. A gun. One bullet fired to the rising snarls. One lead to two, which lead to several in quick succession, then the sound of someone reloading, before shouting “FIRE!” and the rounds starting again, BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG until Jean and Eren couldn’t stand to see what was happening behind the mesh of tangled branches, hoping that if they hit anything it would be enough to take it down so that it would be worth it.

They clawed through, letting their guns fire wildly into the outlines of limping figures, and the shadows falling with silence. That was the plan; shoot wildly, stay mostly hidden, don’t die. Simple and easy.

And it worked. Honestly, what did they expect? The few drabs of the group are snapped up as they laugh and cheer about the success, make fun of the gawking faces of the rotters as they piled them into a truck. The one with brown hair standing by a tree was going towards beer. That kid with the zits sitting on the floor by the pews was a new bog seat for the women’s bathroom. The fat fuck at the entrance of the church was a pack of Malboros for everyone. The one kneeling at the alter and….

The one kneeling. The one with his hands in the stomach of a body. A moving body. A body with his face, long hair tied into a messy bun, shining eyes and wailing in horror. Blood falling from her lips, coating them in a gleam as they shiver with unspeakable horror. Scream. Cry.  Lament and shout in pain as she slips from consciousness, grappling hands teasing up the neck and lifting her weak skull, one more dead body joining the group to reach his hands to Jean, snarling as the other did.

All is silent in the church.

Then one shot.

Bang.

Not from Jean’s gun. Levi’s. Soul rises from the barrel. A whisp. Death grey and ice cold with tempering blood. His sister, gone by the hand of another, a superior taking death into their own hands to spare her the pain- that should be his right. Not someone else. The one who promised to keep her safe and well deserved that right more than anyone. The one that had held her in his arms when he was eight and hated her right on the spot had more right than anyone else. The brother that taught her how shit pop music can be and how awesome practical jokes are should have been there to deliver her peace. The brother that held her as she cried, arms littered with cuts that bled into black, sleeves rolled up all round as he told her it would be okay was the one that had to say goodbye, and he never did.

It wasn’t him, and it should have been. The beginning and the end in an Ouroboros spanning her sixteen years ended not with the start, but with a random star in the galaxy of possibility. It should have been him to say goodbye. It should have been him who pulled the trigger to her head to stop the pain, his face that said a pained goodbye as it had said a pained hello.

Jean screamed as her eyes stared into heaven.

Then all goes black in his mind, and the pain rising through his chest is the only thing he can think of until he wakes up, white on all sides.

And he is alive. Alone.

“Jean?” the voice calls, “you okay there buddy?”

“No.”

The simplicity of those words. The same words that rang into his mind as he woke up burn so similarly. In return he answers with the identical word.

He brings a hand to his face, wiping the tears collected through two types of pain in the corner of his eyes. Hanji taps his shoulder lightly and Jean flinches. His stomach should burn with fresh stitches and yet it doesn’t.  His mind hurts even more, because there she is.

Death is such a strange thing. Seeing the dead is stranger, because suddenly, Jean sees them both, one overlaying the other before swapping and repeating. One has a bright smile, gap in her front teeth still only slight, but closing slowly between her chapped lips, small nose slightly crooked from where she had fallen out of a tree, smiling for the sun. But not just that. Her eyes. Her eyes would smile. Cheeks still pittered in light baby-fat, eyes scrunching, mocking as she’d silently laugh at one of Jean’s shit jokes, or innuendos in front of parents. Her hair, longer than his, softer than his, falling in defiant waves that never could be ironed out, but somehow still managed to flow absolutely perfectly to the centre of her back, pulled back no matter how many times he told her that it hid all of her awesome natural highlights when she tied it up like Hanji, every time told to “shut the fuck up” or receiving a middle finger for his efforts to prove that she was the best damn sister he could have ever asked for. That was her. Strong, smart, the perfection he so lacks in, the heart that the group needed, the mind that the group demanded, the soul that the group wanted. The best thing that had ever happened to Jean, because he saw it all in her. The future rode on her shoulders. She was the eastern horizon that brought golden glory, whilst he is the west; the damp sponge on a hot forehead, the reason to rhyme and the glass half empty. His rock, his family.

And it was ruined by death.

Tears running red in her eyes, lips plush with imminent death. Sallow faced, gaunt, haunted and pained because- fuck! - she was pained. She was pained. And then finality. The last drips of life falling definitely and irreversibly across the bridge of her grazed nose, eyes red and blank and so, so sad. Mouth agape, blood on every surface and smeared across the floor in crunched arches. Broken and beaten. A symbol of fallen hope, all eyes to the floor and a moment of silence for the hero of war that never emerged as a veteran. A child. His sister. Their comrade and brethren that breathed the same air, lived the same life, yet never low enough to receive a title. She never needed one.  No words escape her lips, because they move in silent, crusted suffering. There is no heartbeat, only congealing flesh. Jean sees this, flicking between the day and the night, stuck on infinite dusk without wanting it.

“Amilie,” he whispers like he had done before, when he had woken up two days after her death, body already cremated and sitting in an intricate box by his bedside. Tears are streaming hotly down his cheeks, and he cannot bring himself to wipe them away. They are hers.  His tears for her. Tears of apology and sorrow, now and forever. “It should have been me. This is all my fault.”

Hanji cannot help but think that he is right. They leave him to lie on the desk, alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> I'm alive. Kinda. The festival was a fucking awesome bitch, and Damon Albarn was awesome, as were Editors and Phosphorescent whom I now have a slight affinity with. But Damon Albarn was something else. As he finished playing Clint Eastwood, the whole crowd was screaming it at the top of their lungs, the whole floor was shaking with base. Everyone was soaked to the bone with warm rain, and yet, as the song ended, we didn't care. The heavens opened, and just above the arch of the stage a crack of lightening burst across the stormy black of night, and everyone stopped to watch, listening for the close rumble of thunder. We screamed, hands praising the sky at the roar.... and dude it was fucking rad. But that was expected. It was pretty awesome overall really and I ate so many pizzas and drank so much cider that I couldn't complain.
> 
> Okay, there's a reason I included this song. It's not important or anything, but I kinda like it. One time me and the artist had a conversation on Twitter about a cat perhaps spraying in his flat, and he was sort of worried because his Dad couldn't smell it but he could. So this is for you, Billy Lockett, the Jon Snow impersonator with a fucking adorable voice. Play your shit in my summary.
> 
> Thanks for reading, Kudos'ing and commenting. Thank you all :3


	5. "He will come at the end of the world; he will judge the living and the dead; and he will reward all, both the lost and the elect, according to their works."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Listen- [(Rise Against- Hero Of War)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaTqrdZ_cgQ)
> 
>  
> 
> _She walked through bullets and haze_   
>  _I asked her to stop_   
>  _I begged her to stay._   
>  _But she pressed on_   
>  _So I lifted my gun_   
>  _And I fired away._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've changed the plot slightly. Luckily the only changes I've made to what I've written so far is in Chapter 1. The storyline only differed from this point on anyway.

An alarm wakes him, the same one that has droned on identically for months in response to his morning snores. It is early, the sky outside a filthy grey rather than blue- although that seems to be the average for this area. Jean can never be sure if the light is purely from the disgusting fires that burn without ending, or if it is just the same stagnant clouds that never blow away in the February wind.

He lies, sheened in a layer of nightmare-slick sweat and trying not to miss the button as he flails his arm, attempting to catch the black box outlining the time; 05:31, 14-02-2011.

She got the worst birthday, that is, besides Levi’s. She had always complained at how every year without fail, she would always receive at least one teddy bear with a disgusting heart macabrely sewn between eternally stuck paws from someone who couldn’t be bothered to buy her a real present.  In fact, she actually ended up doing the whole Jean thing; stating that if people couldn’t be bothered to get her something with a bit of thought or effort put in, she would rather not get anything at all.

Selfish is something the Kirschteins are called often. In reality, it wasn’t that. Jean has always hated fickle people, the sort who would rather skip around the edges rather than head straight on. If there was no purpose, then what was the point to it? The same came to gifts. If a person could not buy something that would at least be useful nor have some slight effort or thought put into it, then why buy it? Useless gifts are a waste of money. Even receiving gift cards or cash was more acceptable. At least they could go towards something he could actually want, something he could invest in and actually enjoy. But something bought just for the sake of saying “here you go” was, quite frankly, a piss take.

Still, he gets up and takes in the faint glow of the alarm, casting red shadows around the room. All but a few minutes have been wasted, and he sighs, thinking of how long she would spend in the bathroom wasting all of the hot water. She would be in there now, dropping toothpaste all over the sink and thoughtfully leaving the toilet seat up since he would probably forget and end up getting piss in the cracks that he had never bothered to fix despite promising he would. But he still puts it down afterwards, even though he knows she won’t put it back up again.

The time reads 05:52, and so he grabs the overused towel hanging on the end of his bed, unlocking the door to his room and making his way along the corridor. He hits the only other door- covered in peeling stickers that only now refused to come away- on the landing, her room, knocking twice like he did every morning.

The awaited call of “fuck off, I’m still alive” didn’t sound.

And so he showers, turning off the heated water halfway through as though she had completely emptied the emersion heater even though it was most likely still pretty full, taking no longer than five minutes to scrub the damp of terror from his skin, then burning himself with cold just to sear away the desert heat, the sound of an explosion and the white flag held up to him, approaching despite his call to stop because otherwise he had to- he HAD to…

Kill. How many? That poor kid, the men he’d hit because they told him to. The ones on his side. The people at home, the soulless he had shot through the skull because sometimes he just felt the need to shoot one. It proved an unknown point. It sated his anger.

And being forced to work with them proved nothing to him. He killed them at every opportunity after that date to just hope that the one captured for eating her was that exact one. He went to baits with Eren, laughed when someone pummelled one with their fists until its empty eyes finally and truly stared at nothing.

He is shivering, and so he turns off the shower stepping out and brushing his teeth, wiping the sink even though it’s clean.  Today, he decides he needs to shave, doing it quickly and accidentally cutting himself too many times in the rush to go downstairs and try and catch her in the act of stealing one of the cigarettes sitting in the packet on the kitchen table, clad only in a towel since she didn’t care, her normally skulking around in one of his hoodies and sometimes his stolen boxers- almost down to her slender knees- when she couldn’t be bothered to put a wash on.

All ten left in the packet from the night before are still there. He lights two, taking one outside and putting it in the ash tray to burn. The other he sips at in the kitchen.

For once, he feels okay. His stomach certainly felt better, and he could at least touch it today. A good sign, he supposes. Mostly, he just wishes he didn’t heal so damn slowly, choking down the collection of pills Hanji had forced upon him with a gulp of thankfully cold water straight from the tap.

Cigarette smoke curls in his hand, a faint line whipping past the window to the kitchen. He finishes his off, almost burning down to the filter in the drifting absence of his mind. In some way, Jean prefers the bitter end to the smoothness of the first few drags. It reminds him of how harmful the habit really is. He puts it out on the wall, throwing the butt into the sink to check on the other cigarette. Halfway burnt, he puts it out. She never smoked it past halfway, and normally got Jean to finish it if he wanted to. Today, he had had enough of the buzz of nicotine cramping in his head, hands shaking in the cold, not wanting to remember how she would say “you’re addicted. You should stop” as he’d snatch it from her hand with a warning glance and get it to the finale in just a few short moments.

“I’m cutting down,” he would say as he’d throw the finished product to the ground. Did say. Does say. This time, it’s a promise. Another lie.

He should eat breakfast, but he pretends to run out of time. Instead he dresses slowly, being careful not to tug the stitches too badly, wearing an over-washed shirt and another pair of baggy sweatpants, the collection growing slowly as his uniform sits and collects dust. He fills the deep pockets with his keys, the dwindling pack and his shit lighter that doesn’t actually work most of the time, knife tucked into the waistband just in case. As he heads down the stairs, he stops at the stair she would sit on before heading on down, grazing her urn with his fingers and a quick goodbye and a ‘happy birthday’.

Jean is out the door by six-thirty.

The town stinks, just as it always does. Checking right, he stands and looks to the graveyard that has caused him so much trouble; the deep grooves in the land surrounded by broken police tape still unclean and empty.

 _Where are they now_ , he thinks.

Disorder flew in months ago. Disappearances rose to something beyond belief as one by one people took them down, one by one the authorities slipped away into the shadows, leaving the people they were supposed to protect barely without hope.

The truth is there is no law anymore. The government don’t do shit; gangs rule the town centre, the prison was emptied out ages ago, everyone either dying or escaping into the patchwork, dead piling on the street to fester. Law had slipped away the second anarchy stepped in. There was never a battle for control. One day they just stopped and never returned. The army had been asked again and again to deploy, to head to London and yet time and every time the Commander had ignored them as though the radios were broken, and they had stayed despite all warnings and protected what little they had.

Jean supposes it turned out alright in the end. Smith had been barely reprimanded, and the town hasn’t fallen into oblivion- unlike so many others. He remembers the brief trip Hanji’s squad had taken up to Cambridge to follow the ULA, and found it derelict. It only made him realise that despite hating what Colchester has become he is almost grateful that it still stands, his house still sits on the same street, still overlooks the same field and row of houses.

Some days he risks the sporadic gunfights just to stare at the castle he had spent summers smoking cigarettes in the dried-up moat, or he heads down to the school he had been kicked out of to remember the fights he had gotten in, the ways he’d managed to get out of doing practically all of his work by pissing around with a few kids more than in the closet. He thanks the town for at least standing as a representative of only half a decade earlier- a skeleton, but still with skin, weak but still alive.

A ten minute walk turns to twenty when pain racks through him with every step.

He walks the same path, even following the roundabout in its lack of traffic; the way they used to go together, despite it being easier the other way, to go through the park instead. Buses had stopped too long ago, and so he used to run. Now, he barely crawls down the partly abandoned pathway next to the half-finished estate.

 Merville Baracks is decent; a collection of old Georgian and Victorian buildings in various shades of rain soaked sandstone that stand proudly in a muffled array. Many are no longer of much more use than just conference rooms and offices, the newer and more disgusting ‘70’s pieces of shit with corrugated iron roofs were the ones that the troupes stayed in before and after deployment for briefings and weapons training. Now more than ever it was protected. High barbed wire fences surround the plot, only part of the much larger image of secretive outbuildings few knew about, filled with planes and guns more terrifying than in any film or TV show. Guns that could blow a mile long hole with a school in the centre, thousands of people obliterated at the touch of a single button.

He works for this. Corruption pure and simple. Dictators disguised as allies. Spies. Wolves in sheep’s clothing, baring fangs and ready to bite at the population, swarm and attack with furious precision with a bad word and a cry that silences into nothing. Ready to destroy for the sake of it.

Just because it was not at home doesn’t mean it was not true. Heroes: that’s what they are. Rounds of applause and medals await killers with too much firepower, homes they do not deserve for destroying families who deserved to live in them. Lazy people dragged in for wanting to do good spat out ‘good’ people for having to do bad. A flawed system. Knowledge given to those who resent it and hidden from those who respect.

Jean opens the door to the office, walking through to the lack of receptionist room  with a flick of his wrist to the wall of paper sheets, tapping his with a new hole and placing it in the pocket on the other side.

An only system that worked well, he supposes.

Moblit greets him at the door, dishwasher blond hair longer than usual, dishevelled and slightly greasy around pallid skin. He blinks weakly and barely manages to keep his dull brown eyes open behind drooping eyelids.

Jean snorts. “Hanji keeping you up?”

“More like they’re not letting me die. I can’t help but think they’re more of a national threat than terrorists and rotters put together.” He slips a curved bottle from beside his hip, flicking the cap and taking a grimaced swig. “This is the only thing keeping me up,” he sighs and turns to the door, Jean following patiently behind.

This is a route he knows well, the corridor slipping downwards and into a set of stone-lined stairs. Wired lights run at intervals across the dimpled walls, limewashed and crumbling onto concrete. Underground is where most of the facility lies, hidden underneath the town to link all parts of Garrison together in a spider’s network of tunnels and underground roads.  Most of the testing happens here. Guns and equipment are made and fixed, tested and repaired in complete silent secrecy. There are places even Erwin doesn’t have access to.

Miles and miles the tunnels stretch in straight lines, diverting traffic left and right with angular corners leading to every location. Three to the left and two to the right, and they are there. Another set of stairs much older and steeper than the first lead to a metal door that Moblit types out a short sequence for, and it swings open.

 

 

 

 --

_This whole damn thing is a lie. Protecting the people? Fuck that. Fuck their messed up morals. The only people they’re trying to protect are themselves, their reputations. Why did we ever need to get involved?_

_The truth is we didn’t. We have our uses, but pretending that somewhere in the world is a threat so large that sparing bodies with families and partners and friends is enough… it’s not. The threat could never be that great._

_I may say shit. I might piss someone off occasionally. But I do it because I tell the truth. If I think someone is being reckless, I’ll tell them. If someone comes up with an idiotic idea, I’m not going to pretend I like it, or that I think it will work. Because that is what gets people hurt. You don’t lie simply because you can. You don’t lie because people die or because it makes it easier to deal with death._

_So when people lie about things like this, about wars we start… I don’t like it. I’m fighting for a lie. I fight for people who would rather pretend that our deaths have more meaning than they really do. Pretending that ‘there’s an evil out there that will get us at the slightest chance’… but we attacked first. We don’t protect. We lift our guns and fire blindly, trying to avoid people but hitting them all the same. Once upon a time I thought that it was right to do this, and now I can just see blood. I know it isn’t right._

_Once in a while, we do what we wanted to. We protect. Then we get up our guns and shoot ten men that are trying to live for their wives and children that hide from people like us. Hide from us._

_And I suppose that’s why I’m so pissed off that she got involved with it. I lived on the hopes of a changing lie for too long. She didn’t. She could escape it all and pretend that what she had seen was worth nothing. It is worth nothing. The whole system is so fucking fickle it pisses me off. We all could have avoided this, and yet we didn’t. We thought it was right and now we’re just as bad as the people we see littering tabloids._

_I live with death, I live for death. She lived for living, for waking up and doing whatever shit she could do, pretending that the world isn’t perpetually stuck in a war none of us can win, fighting for people who deserved nothing more than to die painfully. She believed in the life after the rain of deaths that dusted the world. I believed in dying for a cause I would never live to see the end of and would never believe in like I once did._

_And the irony is…_

_The irony is that she died. And I didn’t._

_\--_

 

Eren cannot believe the endless flow of them. One after the other they drip into the re-purposed prep room, each one cleared of the orange he recognises on Mikasa so well. Every single one of them has skin which seems to hide ice underneath its surface of temperate colour. 

Then there were the eyes. Hanji had ordered Moblit to draw one eye after another until the desk behind one way glass filled with pairs of sheets with dull stares, pale irises and budding, dark centres that never looked the same and never had the same perfect round that Mikasa’s has. Whatever the shade of skin painstakingly etched in pencil to outline the creases of eyelids and lashes, the same thing always happens; dark spikes, blooms of delicate, vantablack slits that tear through painstakingly clean white or bloodless yellows, never blinking as much as what they should do.

They get stripped, tied down and prodded like freaks at a fayre. Eren can hear Hanji laughing at every result from behind the glass, safe and free from the pleading and angry shouts as he straps electrodes to their heads, touching parts too private to be fondled so casually. Poked. Prodded. Scratched.

Each one feels nothing; that is for sure. Many give up and stare into the reflective mirror opposite with self-pity, some wail incessantly until Eren or Jean is forced to shout, to threaten to kick them or Taser them without a second thought.

Neither of them wants to be there. Jean had been sweating the second a PDS sufferer stepped into the room, at first just as pleading as the test subjects themselves and certainly twice as vocal about not wanting to deal with this shit. It had taken some time for him to settle, and now he rushed every step as though cutting down just ten seconds between one and the next makes the world of difference to the panic hidden behind his mock authoritative glare.

Eren just doesn’t want to believe that Mikasa could be in the same situation if he had not been there. Suddenly, he is more grateful than ever for Jean. Jean, who had been there time and time again in the field telling him that his plans were stupid, that they would get him killed within moments of stepping onto No Man’s Land. If he hadn’t, he would be gone and she would suffer this, something he feels guilty for inflicting.

“Unstrap her.” Through the speakers Hanji gives orders. They do as they are told, taking the straps from the small girl’s wrists and letting her fall to the floor in the most realistic display of pain Eren has ever seen, limbs splayed, body creased in pain which he knows isn’t there. The injections really do a number on some of them; kicking and screaming and just repeating the same words, every one of them with the same apology on their tongues.

Eren knows how much this burns. Every day he goes through the same. Mikasa can look stoic, can seem to be barely affected yet each and every one end in an apology he wishes she knew not to say. Perhaps more than most, he can stand with Mikasa, with people who suffer from something they cannot help. They are defenceless whilst people, real decent people, kill for the sake of it. They prey on those who don’t deserve it, punish for not understanding when how can they? How can they know exactly what the world was like when they didn’t understand what was happening around them, what it feels like to be an outcast of a group you know you belong to?

The girl sobs in a helpless heap on the floor, blonde hair dripping on her face in greased swathes. Hanji coughs over the microphone and Jean returns it with a slight growl as he goes to collect her clothes bunched on the floor before throwing them across the angled gurney and opening the door. She puts on the clothes, taking the scarf bundled in the mixture and burying her face deeply into it- noseless.

She had to be the worst one yet. Eren had spent an evening up alone, letting Mikasa sleep in his bed as he looked through the files to study each in great detail and had seen hers, almost gagging.

Mikasa had found them, of course, but barely questioned what he was doing. She only told him to be careful and he promised her he would be. However he searching was at least partially fruitful, and she was delighted to see a face she recognised, telling him all about what had happened at Norfolk with a brightness that had evaded her last mention of the place. Promises had been made between them, and it was only now he realised how important they were, how necessary.

The promise to stay empathetic and calm. He understood why so deeply now as he helped up the dry-faced girl who wracked with cries, every step to the guard outside painfully raw, as one was exchanged for another.

The new one immediately pummels Jean in the stomach. He doubles over with a cry of “fuck”, glaring at the proud onlooker, the growth on her cheek moving with the shark grin.

“Y’ fuck’n d’serve ‘t. Bast’rd,” she laughs, heavy drawl catching every word heavily. Mocking. But she carries on regardless of Jean getting up against the pain, against the guard that stands by the door, gun cocked. “G’hed. Shoot me. Ain’ li- ‘m th’ on’ny one wiv’ connec-shuns t’ver ULA. Innit.”

“Don’t,” Hanji pipes up through the crackling speaker, “we need her.”

“Fuck yeh yer do. If tha’is, y’ di’n’ touch m’ Krista. If y’ hurt ‘er-“

“We didn’t,” the slowly rising angry tone of the dark-haired is sliced through by Eren, leaning in to take a flailing arm and pulling it into his side, faintly restraining the walker. She shrugs, but Eren persists with an angry glare and a growl. “We just followed procedure, ‘kay? We gave her the shot and did the exact same check we’ve done to the rest and we’ll do to you. So pipe the fuck down.”

He can feel the ripple of anger through her body, the piercing iced glare passing over him, glazing over at a bent-over Jean, over the pane of one way glass and the gurney, laced with leather straps and walls surrounded by trays and oxygen tanks. Then she smirks, ripping herself from his grip with tremendous force and striding to the glass and staring into it without blinking, a finger extended to the window. “I fuck’n swear tha’ if she don’ get out’ta ‘ere lookin’ ev’ry part th’ normal pers’n I swear tha’ we’ll get yer. We’ll fuck’n kill yer.”

“We promise. She’s on the programme for rehabilitation. Just tell us the code to access the ‘Undead Prophet’ website and we’ll let her go,” and for once, Eren notices how seriously Hanji talks, how much hope is twisted into these words. This is important for them, important their work and Hanji needs everyone to know it.

The walker talks to the wall and speaks into the glass, hushed. There is silence for a few moments before Hanji cuts through once again. “Excellent. Eren, we’re sending it to your house. Answer the door for it yourself and don’t let Mikasa know what’s inside.”

Eren nods at his orders. “Yes, Squad Leader!”

“Good. Now get to work.”

And they do, Jean pulling back the walker so she faces the glass and immediately beginning to strip all clothes from her in an unceremonious fashion, tossing everything across the room haphazardly and without a care for where they land. Jean slinks off, letting Eren take over to peel the vest and underwear from the patient, and he stares at a green light at the base of the mirror to indicate the need to start the same routine.

It is overly intimate, and Eren hates it. From the top of the woman’s head down to the feet, between the legs and in places he feels a sudden rush of guilt for touching he searches, asking over and over if she can feel anything or if there are any unusual sensations. Not if she was okay with it, and in sudden embarrassment he offers her a sympathetic look she takes and throws back one thousand times angrier. As always there is nothing except the slight tingle around the catheter each one has at the base of the neck and Eren can tell that despite the monotony of the results, it was at least useful to Hanji.

Jean meanwhile sets up the injection, putting the glass vile in the metallic contraption and clamping it down, leaving it on a tray to undo the straps as the female walker looks on, face blank of emotion.

“You need to stand on those,” Jean points his foot to two jutting metal ledges, avoiding eye contact. The walker complies, never taking her fox glance from the glass, even staring into it as Jean straps her down in every place he could; from her wrists to around her waist, feet and legs, placing electrodes evenly across her forehead and chest.

But she just stares without complaint, almost smirking and it irks Eren. He takes the syringe from the tray, slipping his fingers through the holes and steadying his grip. Only as he walks around behind her does she pull her eyes away, mouth opening into a quick string of words.

“I can do ‘t meself. ‘M not gon’ bite yer or som’mit.”

“You can’t. Otherwise we won’t get good readings.” Hanji’s bark permeates through the glass at the walkers words, even as Eren tries his hardest to stay calm and rational, everything slipping away as he attempts not to snap.  The other man shies to the corner of the room and nods quickly at Eren before diverting his eyes. “We’re ready.”

Something snaps, sharp noise reverberating, coiling. The biter groans and arches her back from the upright plank yet unlike most she keeps her eyes focused, training them on Jean in such a wide glare he begins to recoil, turning away under the intensity.

Hanji gasps, even though they have done this every time and every time the result is the same. “Another one with lower than normal brain function, no heart rate. This is wonderful. Do the injection now.”

And Eren nods, taking the syringe deeper into his palm and rising himself to slip the cool metal tip into the hanging neck and pushing down the lever with a sharp exhalation through both his lips and the hissing stainless grey of steel.

The walker pulses, gasping out for air with a rough growl through bared teeth. She curves her spine from the metal board behind her back and hangs from the straps and braces holding her arms away from her body.

“Fuck!” She screams, whistling a cry that ends in a pained laugh. “Fuck it, fuck you all.”

“I’d rather you didn’t. You’re forgetting who has the gun.” The guard is smug and, actually, it pisses Jean off more than the biter does.

She laughs. Her limbs writhe in their guards, dark hair falling wildly in ever direction. “Y’think a gun can stop me, stop _us_?”

"Don' think fer a moment that jes' because y'have a piece 'ef shit between yer hands it means tha' yer better than me. I know things about this fuckin' place tha' would make yer wanna turn th' barrel 'round an' shoot yerself with it ins'ead. I know shit that yer precious doctor would love ter know, and I know that yer fuckin' commander is in deeper shit than you might realise." She laughs, staring down the guard with a cold, blank gaze, smirking as he retreats with his back against the wall. "An' d'yer know what else?" She muses.

"I know tha' by th’ time yer realise what's goin' on, mos’ of yer‘ll be dead, and th’ ULA will be sittin' pretty on yer rotten corpses. Don' think tha’ havin' a gun makes yer a bet’er person. I' don't. It makes it worse, really. I mean, yer practically holdin' yer gun up against one of yer own. Neither of us wanna fight really. We'se jes protection' us’selves." Eren only carries on with his task of untying her, ignoring everything the lady says. "So I'll let yer in on a lit'le secret. Tha' Commander Smif, right? Yeah, well, guess why ‘e let yer brin' us ‘ere. It ain't for yer experiments or whatever ‘e tells yer. Y’ ever wondered why Blue Oblivion were available t’ th’ undead as soon as yer star’ed to turn us back? D'yer wanna know why?"

The intercom picks up with a crackle, Hanji’s voice pale. "You have permission to take it down."

But the walker laughs, even as the guard steps forward with his Taser in hand, Eren backing away to stand next to Jean. They stared to the floor as the walker swirled her eyes from the guard to them, and then finally to the one way mirror, looking through with such accuracy that Hanji feels as though the rotter knows exactly where they are sitting as she screeches her words in hasty superiority. "Well guess what, Doctor,” it spits, “guess why the fuck we're here.  'Cause it ain't for you, nah. We're yer commander's secret weapon. The on’y reason yer ‘ave us aroun' is ‘cause the fuckin' military made us. An' it's all a Goddamn excuse fer him ter keep us ‘ere until he can use us. Th' Gover'ment, th' military jes want us ter keep th' people at bay. Ain't yer thought 'bout it, Doctor? Ain't yer realised that everythin's too perfect ter be coincidence? Ain't yer wonderin' why yer couldn't get a sample from them and I had ter give yer the code? It's because they know the' if someone like you finds it, then yer'll know that it would'a taken years fer th-"

“She’s such a cunt,” the guard spits as the rotter slumps where she sits.

Hanji’s breath shakes over the intercom, snapped and broken with rough clacks of their jaw.

They want to believe that the walker is wrong, that everything she has obviously learnt is just ULA bullshit.

Yet they also know that some of it fits.

Why, they wonder, has the Government refused every attempt to get Blue Oblivion? Why were they so up-tight about every scrap of information, yet open with just enough? Suspicion blooms in their chest as the guard drags Ymir with no last name from the room, Jean and Eren already sighing with overworked expressions.

“Do you want to stop?” Moblit takes a swig of whatever he has in his hip flask, and suddenly Hanji feels the urge to rip it form his hands and drink from it too. Lord knows that the stress he must feel dealing with them also weighs heavily on Hanji’s own shoulders, and a gulp of something strong seems too pleasant.

He lets them have a gulp, weary but somewhat satisfied by the way it calms Hanji. They are all close to done, he knows it. But he had dealt with the feeling more than once, somewhat the strongest one when it came to dealing with undue pressure- particularly if Hanji was involved. So he asks them again, and instead of an answer they click the intercom. Eren and Jean look to the window and nod at the direction of the glass, prepare and stand ready and waiting. Moblit, however, grimaces.

“One more and then Moblit’s buying us all a lager. ‘Kay?”

 

 

 

\-- 

_I can’t protect you baby. I thought- I guessed- that being with them would keep us both safe. But I know so much now, and I’m not safe, or a good person to be with. I’m a constant danger to you when all I wanted to do was take you away to somewhere we could be happy and safe together, forever._

_None of this is your fault, but if you are so sure about this, then I’ll do it for you, babygirl. If you think that letting ourselves slip back into how they want us to be just so we can go together is the way, then so be it I guess. I’m doing it for you, because I want it all to stop. The ULA can only do so much, they can only try to reveal for so long without the government noticing. And then what? We’re stuck._

_So if you want to go, then I’ll go with you. From here, always away from here. Forever._

_\--_

 

This was the last thing he needed.

Everyone was asking questions, but now this? How he had let this slip through his grasp he was not sure. Annie had made it sound as though they’d be so careful. Her own team had even given him the drug! It had been a failure, sure, but who knew what the implications were.  It had been too much, or something… she had said so. It didn’t do the job. So now what? Hanji was testing something that _could_ \- and that was the breaking point for Erwin-  just expose everything.

It was bad enough ULA members were mixed in. One was too many. Two was infinitely more dangerous.

He thanks God for the fact he could just pick them off with an excuse after they take Blue Oblivion. They wouldn't recognise the switch before it happens.

But even after that thought is slid to the back of his mind, filed away, the real problem plays at the front. What to do…

What does he do with the unwanted Number Seven?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this is so late! I actually ended up changing the plot, which is really stupid but eh! 
> 
> The time between this and the next will be shorter, I've already started the next chapter.
> 
> Also unbeta'd. I'm just putting it up because I feel really guilty.
> 
>  
> 
> [My Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/luukiead)


	6. "I saw the dead, the great and the lowly, standing before the throne, and scrolls were opened."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Listen- [(Fink- Looking Too Closely)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Zb_4ZOM7M)
> 
>  
> 
> _Put your arms around somebody else,_  
>  _And don't punish yourself, punish yourself._  
>  _The truth is like blood underneath your fingernails,_  
>  _And you don't want to hurt yourself, hurt yourself_  
>  _By looking too closely._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ( If you're wondering why I've re-updated this for the fucking second time, the changes have been added to this chapter. At the end. I recommend that you check it out, really. It's something I realised just now that I've forgotten to put in since I'm a dumbass and write parts of chapters in about ten different documents on three different platforms instead of writing a whole chapter in one document like a normal human being. But no. So have this instead- a series of smaller updates that are just adding extra detail which is really fucking important to the plot. Good job me, really. Also, mention of an actual In The Flesh character. Wow.)
> 
> Also if someone can tell me the song the lyrics are from, I'll kiss ya.

“Uh,” Jean follows the deep murmur to a walker standing at the door, nervously eyeing the room with a downturned expression and wringing his bandaged hand so tightly Jean can hear them squeak against his skin with every contorted grip. His eye, Jean notices immediately- the other hidden behind a fabric patch tied awkwardly across his cheek and into his hair- flicks everywhere without stopping, repeatedly hitting the window and Eren with white-hot glances and purposefully avoiding both Jean and the guard, blinking deeply as it passes over them both. He isn’t sure if that annoys him more than others who had openly stared at everyone and anything.

It guzzles air it doesn’t need before talking again in a small voice. “I’m sorry I bit ye again yesterday, uh… Hanji, was it?” He smiles weakly at the end of the sentence.

“It’s fine Marco, don’t worry. I got a saliva sample this time… very interesting stuff. Your enzymes are still functioning, even at a lower body temperature, so I suppose now I’m going have to check if the others are the same way. Isn’t that interesting?”

The walker, ‘Marco’ Jean corrects in his head, just nods and smiles weakly at the comment which, quite frankly, Jean couldn’t care less about. He goes through the same routine once more, walks over to the gurney and undoes the straps so they hang loosely, adjusting the ledges at the base by just a few inches to accommodate for the new walker’s height.

Marco continues to ramble on, Jean only catching parts of his babble through a heavy, nervous accent and constant bouts of cutting laughter, “- and Armin always used to try and, y’know, make me learn that but I was never good at science so I ended up doing Health and Social Care, which I suppose isn’t exactly a proper subject, but Armin, well, he ended up getting ninety-six percent in Biology and Lord is he good at maths-“

Jean interrupts rudely, pissed off and tired. “That’s great and all, but I kind of don’t care.” Jean clicks another cartridge into another injection gun without looking away from his task, smirking at how he thinks the walkers face must look like whilst he ignores it entirely. “Now strip off.”

A strangled choke and a small smatter of laughter ring around the room, vibrating against the glass before the walker almost whispers. “Uh, excuse me?”

Something lights up in Jean, his confidence suddenly flourishing at the demised comfort of the biter. He snickers silently. “You heard me. Strip.”

Marco sighs, facing forward and pulling the thick jumper over his head, untying the bandage at the shoulder and letting it unwind. He looks to Eren who points to the ground with a small frown, an indication to drop it to the floor.

The whole time his eyes avoid the reflective mirror. Marco is afraid of what he might find in it, and has until now kept far away. Vanity was never a fatal flaw of his, but to see himself as how he is- someone damaged beyond all recognition- is terrifying.

Ymir and Krista had been through it, seen themselves for what they were and in some ways revel in their new identity. Ymir had known how horrific she looked before her death. Krista, bless her soul, did not. She had told Marco on the journey up to wherever they were that most of the damage to her face was done after her death. The shock had been more than enough for her confidence in the living to plummet.

But this! This is humiliating. Marco knows that all of the eyes in the room are watching him in caution and interest, his fingers twiddling at the button of his jeans, incredibly unwilling to take that final step and comply. He moves his gaze to look pleadingly at Jean who only rakes his eyes over Marco’s figure coldly and in some strange form of disgust.

“This is so degrading. Please don’t make me.” No one answers. “Please, everything’s in t’ post mortem anyway.”

“I’m afraid what we want to know isn’t.” Hanji speaks up quickly before the intercom cracks offline.

“Please,” Marco tries to reiterate, swallowing thickly and his eyebrows furrowing in displeasure, tone rising in his plea. “Please don’t make me do this. I’ll tell you what y’ want to know just… I don’t want people t’ see.”

Silence hangs in the air between the three army men and the walker, waiting for someone to cut through with a demand or answer.

Eren looks to Jean, a look of _‘please don’t do anything stupid’_ that is highlighted with a cutting bottle-green stare under his thick lashes. Jean returns it with a not so subtle scratch to the chest with his centre finger reddening his collarbone alone.

Marco looks to the floor.

A crackle breaks them all out of their silence, the microphone whining as an unfamiliar male voice takes charge. “Uh, Dr. Moblit Berner here. I’m assisting Squad Leader Zoe in their investigation. I have your post mortem, Mr Bodt. Hanji and I feel as though Private Kirschtein needs the information on this file before we proceed with your examination.” Without question- much to Marco’s chagrin- he begins to read. “Marco Breaccan  Bodt, date of birth June sixteenth, nineteen eighty-five. Place of death, 17 St. Patrick Close, Kilkenny, Ireland. “

“Uh, it’s pronounce Brek-awn, not Breekan.” Marco cuts in and suddenly realises what he has done, told immediately by the tense stare from the guard. “Sorry,” he concludes quietly.

“No no, it’s fine. I read ahead whilst you talked.” There is a hum from the speakers before Moblit continues to talk. “The most likely cause of death was asphyxiation caused by the inhalation of smoke, although before you were found there did seem to be some minor blood loss from your eye and right side and were most likely knocked out from the pain caused by the damage done to your ocular nerve blah blah blah and so forth.”

There is another silence, the sound of paper rustling the only sound before the doctor spoke again. “Body lying face down with his right arm outstretched… both legs trapped, bruising occured. Face turned with left side to the ground. Right eye in left hand, impaled on glass-“

“Holy shit.”  Jean whispers, Eren shooting a sharp “shut up” at him.

“Body not found until thirty-two hours after incident. Minimal burns to lower back. You were lucky that the beam saved you from being crushed completely, the building collapsed shortly after they put out the fire, this says. Only a few post-mortem scrapes. Rigor mortis most likely quickened by the heat. It was still fully in process by the time the corpse was found and probably not in relief by the time of burial, which is incredibly unusual seeing as we would expect autolysis to have taken effect more quickly. Normally it starts after just a few hours after death, ending two to three days later. Your body was still stiff after four days, and so there must have been an unusual occurrence at the start. Oh, Hanji look at this.”

More shuffling, new quiet murmurs. Then suddenly Hanji screamed. “That’s brilliant! Moblit I could kiss you if you didn’t stink of whiskey.” Eren laughs shortly. “He’s still suffering from angel lust.”

“That makes no sense. Surely the body would have loosened by then. Bacterial decay should have reversed that long ago. Considering that the PDS sufferer is able to walk around freely with very little resistance then a death erection would have most likely faded.”

“But the body hasn’t decayed!” Hanji screams. The microphone shrills back. “Not one PDS sufferer has had any form of decay anywhere. The body is perfectly preserved since the time of death. So perhaps the body of a PDS patient lacks the ability to go into autolysis caused by whatever caused the syndrome in the first place. The movement caused by the time in their untreated state loosens the muscle, however since the penis hasn’t been moved since death it remains hardened- asphyxiation and the face-down position whilst going into rigor mortis increases the chance of a death erection. There was a hanging patient too, I wonder if her labium has become engorged.”

“Hanji,” Jean growls, “I am not touching a hard dick.”

Suddenly, Marco realises. “Please!” He shouts, and the guard immediately picks his gun to aim at the walker. He ignores the click of metal, “please. I’ll tell ye what y’ need t’ know. Just… not that.”

But Hanji ignores it, going to the speaker and whispering excitedly. “Kirschtein, this in an order. Remove all items of clothing and proceed with the test.”

Jean is reluctant, but he complies. He sighs noticeably, and gains a pained look from Eren. The walker keeps his head to the ground.

“Yes, Squad Leader.”

He walks over, the rotter making no move. Instead he stands stock still and allows Jean to finish removing his trousers, taking no notice as Jean kneels in front of him and skims the fabric over his legs and taps his ankle to tell him to lift his leg.

Marco doesn’t notice.

“Lift your leg,” he mutters and the walker complies with a small delay and a whimper, resting his hand on Jean’s shoulder to keep himself balanced. He does the same to the other side and Jean throws the jeans next to the jumper. Shoes and socks had been left out entirely, unneeded.

All that is left the eye patch and the dark blue boxers, the faint outline of the walker’s erection beneath the fabric. Jean stands, turning to the mirror and asking Hanji, “Do you want the eye patch removed?”

“Yes.”

Jean nods, turning back to the walker and forcefully lifting his head. It catches his gaze, the single eye so strange.

It is just so, so white. The blooming, dark centre stares wildly. It does not point, but somehow manage to curl like smoke around the bold centre dot, the edges framed not in the same black but in a shining brown. The plea still sits there despite the inability for the eye to function, carefully watching Jean as he grows painfully close, lifting his arms up to untie the strap and pull the eye patch away.  

The difference is stark. He gasps in shock, looking to the sunken socket stitched badly with dark thread, and for some reason his lips automatically turn downwards, eyebrows furrowing.

Marco’s lips quake.

“This is enough.” He chokes. And Jean knows.

For some reason, now is the time he feels sympathy.

Perhaps it is the palpable embarrassment, or the pure horror on the walkers face. Perhaps it is the way it seems so much more vulnerable than the rest of them, face and body tense and unwilling, curled forward.

Their closeness shows Jean how harmless he is. The muscles on Marco’s face twitch in unhappiness, and the seemingly lonely moments in which Jean watches, he only notices how Marco keeps his head down, the only eye contact pleading and worried.

He knows he has to carry on.

“P- permission to continue, Squad Leader.” Jean chokes. He immediately regrets those words and licks his lips as though it would rid them from his mouth.

“Granted, continue Private.”

So he does, following command like a good little soldier, devoid of feeling and emotion. He kneels again, feeling so disgustingly suggestive that it kills him, and pulls down the last bit of fabric to Marco’s cry, wet with pain so deep it tears into Jean’s gut more than the pain of his injury had ever done.

 _I’m doing this,_ he thinks, _I’m causing more pain than necessary._

Marco continues to cry as the boxers slip unattended by his ankles and his erection… not so much springing. There is nothing alive, no movement. Instead it stays stock still as Jean wraps his hand around the cold flesh, trying to feel if it has any give from the slightly off-centre position, Marco sobbing dryly.

“Nothing,” he moans through the sobs, “I don’t feel anything. Can y’ please stop?”

That’s enough for Jean, who removes his hand and slips the boxes back up the legs and simultaneously stands. He looks to Marco, eye so sad, lips downturned and cold and pursed together as though he were holding back tears.

For some reason, Jean almost copies the same expression.

“Nothing, Squad Leader.” His voice croaks, eyes never moving from Marco’s- this walker more alive than any other, the start of his doubt- as he tries to carry on. “Permission to start the injection.”

“Granted. Make sure you have this one’s head tied down, it bites.”

He nods, pushing the walker back to the gurney.

Marco collapses into it, suddenly realising and reflectively stepping up onto the platform to give him purchase and his head slots between two curved bars that fit around his head and force him to look forward.

Forward to his own reflection.

Jean does the strap over his forehead and he is stuck, looking into the glass with unblinking eyes and uncaring as the soldier moves is arms and legs into straps, not even caring as he stands behind and pushes the metal into the catheter at the back of his neck and shoots the freezing liquid into him.

Instead of shutting his eyes and letting the images of his death roll before him- burning then darkness then fractured time between blood and gore, broken and terrible, he lets them play into reality, to reflect onto his face the gurning and the scream of pain at the world, watching his eye shrink and flex in death, limbs rattling.

He never blinks.

Not even as the burn slows down and Jean undoes his arms, then his head and legs, and Marco stumbles off and heads straight to his reflection without a word.

They let him, watching.

Jean notes the shaking legs that knock like that of a new-born foal. He notices the slump in his shoulders and the pitiful tilt of Marco’s head as he looks to himself with such a mixture of disgust and hatred that it is almost sickening.

He wonders if Jean looks at walkers like Marco looks at himself.

“Interesting…Remove the PDS patient please. We’re done with the testing.” Hanji breathes contentedly, and Jean nods.

He leads Marco back without issue, handing him the clothes to put on. The whole time his eyes never stray, and it is so tiring. Jean yawns, suddenly so done with it all.

“Squad Leader, would it be possible to take a break before we continue? I need a piss.”

“Good idea. It’s past two already.” Moblit hums in agreement with Hanji, “okay, take twenty, then be back here to carry on. I want the hanging patient in here next, and a full report on this subject from Kirschtein.”

Both Eren and Jean salute, turning to Marco. They glance at each other quickly before Jean speaks up, croaking.

“I’ll take him back, it’s on the way.”

“Y’ sure?” Eren looks somewhere between confused and sympathetic, but Jean ignores it, nodding and looking to Marco quickly. The walker stands, still staring at his own reflection with horror.

It seems so human.

“Yeah, I gotta make it up somehow.”

Eren only huffs, patting Jean on the shoulder. “Sure, man. See you in twenty.” Then his footsteps recede, Jean left looking to Marco, who looks to the mirror.

“Ready to go?” He asks, and Marco flips his head to look. He looks so deflated, so unhappy. “I’m sorry, k’now. I really didn’t want to do that, uh, I mean… sorry it came to that. We should have listened, I guess.”

The walker just nods lightly, heading barefoot towards the door without a second glance to Jean who follows behind, trying to make it seem to anyone who might care that he is in charge of the walker.

They round a few corners not really heading anywhere in particular when suddenly Marco collapses against a wall, sinking his head into his knees.

And then his body starts to shake.

 

 

 

\-- 

_One of the first things they said to us after we started to fight them was “they aren’t people any more. They are cold, hard killers that won’t look any different from the moment they walk around their grave to the point they tear into your neck.” And I kind of lived off of that._

_Even the ones today either came in looking terrified and left looking the same way, or it was in sarcasm and offhand hate from start to end. But you didn’t do that. At first I thought that maybe you looked even slightly hopeful, but then you just plummeted._

_I watched you fall and I let you because I thought it was okay._

_\--_

 

“They did what?” Mikasa almost screams it from the kitchen. Eren wraps his hands around the mug of tea, fingers almost burning despite the steam no longer pouring from the surface of the milky liquid. On the coffee table sits a small packet wrapped in brown paper, mostly hidden by a thin newspaper stained with coffee and leftover curry stains.

“Touched him," Eren murmurs. He swallows his own anger. "We didn’t want to do it, I tried to get Hanji to use the equipment but they said the base is runnin’ off of backup generators anyway, and they didn’t want to risk a short circuit by adding extra monitors and screens.”

“Bullshit.” Footsteps stomp from the kitchen to the living room and Mikasa collapses onto the couch next to Eren, head against the back of the blanket covered cushions.  “Erwin is being as cheap and secretive as always, and Hanji’s an impatient piece of shit that doesn’t realise they’re hurting people. Did they even ask Marco what was up or if he already knew?”

Eren takes a sip of tea, realising that it is slightly too cold for his liking, “no. Even Jean’s had a change of heart. You should have seen him, he went off with Marco afterwards to try and talk to him, looked like he was about to cry or somm’it. He didn’t turn up all afternoon. Left me to do everythin’ on my own, the dickhead.”

They sit in silence for a moment, Eren quickly drinking the tea, Mikasa readjusting her legs underneath herself and sighing. “Can I ask you something?” Eren questions quickly.

Mikasa looks to Eren, her clear eyes thinking. “What?”

He swallows, remnants of tea bitter on his tongue. “I… I was wondering if you feel anything.“

“Feel anything? No.” Eren breathes deeply, nodding and looking forward to the blank television. Mikasa continues, voice hushed. “Well, not nothing, just my body. Emotionally I feel everything, more than I did before, I think. But I can’t feel the couch, and I don’t know how warm the room is. I don’t get turned on, and when I look at you my heart doesn’t beat like it used to, but I still… I don’t know.”

Eren had sat forward during her ramble, listening intently. “Don’t know?”

A cold hand catches his face, the thumb grazing his cheek, turning his gaze towards Mikasa’s impassive face. She looks to him studying everything coldly; the soft curve of his caramel cheek, the shards of glittering green glass that shines in his eyes, the plush curve of his lips that part gently without him even thinking- just as always.

“I love you, Eren. You know that right?” He nods. “But I can’t feel it. I can’t feel anything I felt before. I just know that I love you. But I don’t feel, it’s like I’m doing it through a brick wall. You feel like nothing to my hands, I can’t touch you.”

Her hand drops, all eyes following.

“It can’t be like before, can it?” Her voice is so resigned, and it kills him. He wants to disagree, to tell her that he can work around it.

Yet she is not the same, and they both know it.

Eren knows that she is right, he just cannot bring himself to tell her yet.

 

 

 

 --

_No, it can’t. I’m sorry._

\-- 

 

 

 

He is horrific.

Like a horror movie, the monster had gazed back without blinking. All Marco could do was stare into its dead eye and wonder how it would kill him, when the monster would finally break and run forward to take his neck between cold hands and strangle until no life resided in his body. It never moved, never looked away- collapsing as though it can’t support its own weight and studying Marco to judge the kill it would make of his mind.

The monster is him. The monster is all of him, the skin and the bones and the flesh he resides in. His mind is his, but everything else is like something out of a bad zombie film. And it feels so choking. Marco feels as though his flesh hold him too tightly, wrapped with anaconda arms snaked thickly in every direction and constricting every movement he makes. He cannot break through the thick muscle. The mind residing within his body directing the collection of demon limbs stitched by Frankenstein, the Jekyll trapped in the body of a murderous Hyde, the cracks of his body the only thing signalling purchase into the light.

His arm is still without bandaging, the staples stitching his skin together in thick lines catching on the blue strands of the jumper, flesh tugging. He lets it; stupidly thinking that if the body opened up enough through small acts of abuse then perhaps he could escape through, as though his soul would rise from the wounds and he could leave himself and go anywhere else but there. He could go home, go find what he had lost.

Armin would never want to see him like this. Armin- the poor, sweet thing- could never live past the horror. Despite what he had been through there was no recovering from this level of hideousness. He was no longer human, in ignorance of the number of times Marco has wished that he is, there is no way Armin could love him like this. Marco can’t even bring himself to.

He has no idea of how long he has sat in the hallway for. No one has come to collect him, and he thinks that they don’t care. After all, why would they? Hanji had seemed so kind just a few days before, and yet they couldn’t see how he felt or understand the pleas.

Only the look Jean had given him was breaking, the fact he still sat on the opposite side of the hallway as he waited for Marco to lift his head from between his knees was devastating, the transition from cold and hating to suddenly standing in horror and sympathy so strange.

“Oh God…” Marco mutters, the first words in hours.

Jean doesn’t reply. It doesn’t surprise Marco. He lifts his head to look at the soldier, finding him looking down the hallway, eyes red and wet. So alive.

He chokes. “I’m so sorry,” and suddenly Marco springs himself up, arms falling away from his knees and back straight against the wall. “I didn’t know that you…”

“No, no don’t.”  Marco shakes his head. “Please. Don’t.”

“No. I didn’t know. I shouldn’t have done that and you…” Jean finishes with a splutter, eyes brimming again. He wipes the tears with the back of his hand and scowls over the top as though it would make any difference. “I’m so selfish. I just assumed that you didn’t care because you’re-“

Marco knows there that sentence ended.

“So did I.”

Jean chokes, and Marco does not know of a way to comfort him. Instead he settles on sitting in silence, studying Jean and his strange transition.

“Before… you were so rude. But now you-“

“I’m so tired of this. I’m sick of hating everything.” And suddenly Jean looks to Marco. His eyes shine wetly, reddened but the golden irises enviably bright. “Everything’s so messed up, and I just want it to be okay.”

He can almost laugh at how childish and whiney Jean sounds, but he can understand.

“I can’t imagine having left Amilie behind and then coming back like you. I’d feel like such a fuck up.”

Marco has to laugh, covering up the pang of the words with his own self-deprecation. “Thanks,” he breathes.

“Uh, no not like that.” Jean sighs, “I don’t mean it. I’m just not that strong, and I wouldn’t have wanted to burden her. Not much of a chance now.”

Marco nods, trying to find purchase in the silence. In the end he cannot, asking a small question. “Who is Amilie?”

Jean looks to Marco again. “Was,” he states, pursing his lips and licking them quickly. “She was killed in Easthorpe, near here four months ago. Head smashed open.”

Pain is written in thick lines against the man’s forehead, cheeks tight. But Marco cannot understand the feeling, despite having seen it time and time again before he had died. He knows the words no one wants to hear without ever experiencing it for himself.

“You’ve heard sorry enough.” It is not a question. Jean looks in confusion but nods shallowly, crossing his arms and stretching his legs along the width of the corridor. “I don’t know what to say when I don’t know how it feels. I wasn’t alive when my parents died, and I’m not even sure where Armin is.”

“He’s your partner, right?”

“Yeah.”

They sit in companionable silence for a short while until Jean does something unexpected, groaning to turn himself around and sit himself next to Marco on his left side, in full view, looking to Marco with a determined look still ringed with red and defiantly stating, “tell me about him” in a flat tone.

At first Marco is shocked. This was the man who had told him that he didn’t care hours earlier. But now he sat, thin face rested in his hands placed on his knees, watching with a keen eye and absently running his fingers shortly through the dark undercut of his hair.

“Y’ sure?” He asks, and Jean smiles weakly.

And so Marco sighs, and slowly begins to talk.

Marco talks about how he met Ermen, two years younger and stupidly brilliant, all dinosaurs and Power Rangers and the scientific names for fish. He talks about the time he had cut Ermen’s blonde hair from the middle of her back to just below her ears in one fell swoop at the age of seven and had been thoroughly reprimanded by both his parents and Ermen’s grandfather, despite her loving it and keeping the same style for years, Marco usually cutting it back for her before her grandfather could protest or before she even got the chance to go to a hairdressers.

He talks about the day that Ermen came out to him, Marco accepting it and crying because he was just so pleased that it had made Ermen so happy. The constant misgendering from students and teachers until he finally told Marco that he wanted to be called Armin- warrior- and it had stayed that way. They had gone around every class together and told the teachers, most of them fine. Some not so much, or at all.

He talks about the times Armin was called every name under the sun, burying himself into books that only Marco could get him to leave alone, instead finding refuge in talking about anything, anywhere other than reality. They escaped to foreign lands, to the moon and back in the nights they couldn’t sleep and forgot to go home.

The time he had told his grandfather that he is a man, not a granddaughter, a woman. The days after where Marco had let him stay in his room and told him over and over that he is brilliant and handsome and whatever else came to mind, helping Armin take off the bandages wrapped around his chest and said “no matter what, you’re perfect” and kissed him because he needed to show Armin just how much he cared, unsure of what else described exactly how much he admired him, loved him and wanted to be there for him no matter what.

And then high school, where they had held hands and been called names all over again. Hiding in the bathroom, in unused classrooms, in the storage cupboard and behind the stage in the performance studio. Armin’s Grandfather dying and leaving nothing to him but unresolved hate and years without a word of love or acceptance.

The weeks of crying.

The counselling that had inspired Marco to help people like Armin. Failing exams despite the help, Armin skipping a year. Finishing school together with a confirmation email to have top surgery, the official change of his gender on his passport.

Having the surgery, and the scars. The happy tears, the pills. University for Armin in Marine Biology, a year of volunteering for Marco around his counselling degree.The constant back-and-forth struggle to get Armin’s phalloplasty. The effects of the hormones that Armin watched in the mirror every morning, refusing to shave back his stubble despite it being thin and patchy at first until Marco had shaved it in his sleep because it really did look terrible, and he couldn’t have a bad moustache being the first thing Armin noticed when looking at his graduation photo. Besides, for the first time it showed how strong he had become, his face hard angles beneath soft golden hair and piercing blue eyes.

That was the night Marco wanted Armin to be his.

Then the ring.

Then Marco’s death…

He has no clue how long he has talked for, but Jean has never looked away. His eyes had hardened, then softened and gone from white to shining red once again. Not once had he interrupted, said a word or done anything but listened. The difference is beautiful, and suddenly Marco feels like Jean cares, sitting in the hallway of a military base with someone who had hated him hours earlier in a strange situation where they had gotten strangely close ridiculously quickly and for no obvious reason other than through pain and apologies.

He is comfortable enough to rest his head on Jean’s shoulder, and Jean lets him, adjusting himself to sit his back up straight against the wall, breath pulsing weakly.

“Thank you,” Marco whispers and he can hear Jean chuckle through the ear pressed to his shoulder.

“You’re welcome.” Jean smiles. “And I do care, by the way. I was being a dick.”

“You were.”

Jean laughs loudly and it bounces everywhere, rambunctious and somewhat warm. “Yeah, but as an apology, next time Hanji wants to do something shit to you, I’ll punch ‘em.”

Marco snaps his head up, looking to Jean with a stern eye, faces close. “Don’t. No hitting.”

“Yessir.” He salutes back and Marco just sighs, resting his head back onto Jean’s shoulder.

He feels so tired. Everything has done a number on him, collecting and building up until he can no longer keep himself awake.

Jean looks to Marco, his eye drifting closed and then to the wall ahead. Its printed pattern is so regular it hurts, but it gets him thinking as he traces the pattern over and over. Right left up down right left up down…

“I’ll find him for you. Armin, I mean.”

Marco snaps himself up promptly, shuffling away from him with an exasperated look. The confusion, then the happiness in his smile is worth it, him resting up on his haunches as though he will bounce up at any moment. “Really?” he pleads.

Standing himself up, Jean smiles. His hands wipe down his tracksuit bottoms before looking to Marco and shrugging. “Well if you won’t let me sock Hanji then I’ve got to make me being a dickbag up somehow.”

Without thinking, Marco leaps forward and wraps his arms around Jean’s neck, burrowing his face in his shoulder. Jean tenses under the grip but does nothing.

“Really?” His voice muffles against Jean’s hoodie.

“Yeah.” And he pushes Marco away, holding him at arm’s length and studying the bright smile on his face. “But in return you have to put up with me and my douchebaggery.”

“I can do that,” and he steps away, letting Jean lead him through the labyrinth of corridors that stretch for miles in every direction, twisting and turning with the contemplations of the day.

Marco feels conflicted- mostly about Jean.

With every turn to the left he sees the pained expressions and the piercing glares filled with something menacing and deep, yet with every right all he notices are the cooled glances and the way he had listened to the ramblings of a dead man, finishing with a promise he probably couldn’t fulfil.

It stems from something, Marco can feel it. He has trained to feel those things; to notice how a person changes, shows guilt and anger through their body and eyes. Those short snaps of hot temper stem from something, Marco is sure, and just talking to Jean has him feeling more confident that perhaps he can drag it out, make Jean learn to open up and release whatever hurt revolves around him like a bad air.

They reach Marco’s cell eventually, Jean opening the door and Marco stepping inside with a short goodbye and a small smile from both parties.

And it comforts Marco. Despite hating what he is and what he is involved in, there is something in the swing of brutal honesty from that man that keeps Marco from wallowing in his own self-pity. The hope he had given him was infinitely more important than the embarrassment and humiliation and he is so grateful for it. Jeans words keep him steady even through the dark night when he lays himself down on the thin mattress and shuts his eyes and just hopes and dreams that- maybe not tomorrow or the day after, but someday- he will show up and have some news, any news, that Marco can learn from, move on from.

Whatever Jean can do for Marco now, it is more important than months of pain.

Jean offers him hope.

 

 

 

 --

_Oh boys, where was the fun? You should see him when t’was done. His eyeballs one by one did disappear._

_And a doctor from the south took one look at his mouth- which had somehow got concayled behind his ear._

_Then he swore an awful oath, he’d have the law agin’ us both and then he’d have both Lim-e-rick and Clare._

_For he found it wouldn’t do, to teach French in Killaloe- unless he has a face or two to spare._

\-- 

 

 

 

From inside the dark office, Annie picks up her phone. It is just an old block muddled madly in wires and unusual casings attached by someone she is not sure she even knows.

Still, the thing works well, blocking everything ever done on the wonderful little device.  One official or another had come up with the idea after the whole thing started.

And it is her pride and joy.

The screen lights up, numbers flashing across the screen at such a speed that her eyes can barely run after them. But it seems good overall. Another day of data, another confirmation that everything was going smoothly. Two weeks in and going strong. Well, except for the anomalies.

The two Undead Liberation Army members, for one. The poor buggers had never seen it coming. After being heavily dosed their intended purpose was tested. And although Erwin had thoroughly berated her for it, Annie had only been internally impressed at how effective the PDS sufferers are as weapons. Turning them on and off as needed only seemed all the easier now. Reiner had listed all of the ways it could be administered, rather fancying a mist himself; something that could fill a room. Then they could all be released in a mass frenzy from a vehicle, leaving the only people vulnerable the ones they wish to attack.

The phone sits heavy in her hand, and she flicks through the results again. He isn’t there, but that is what she expected. In the back of her mind, she wishes she had killed him on the day they’d injected too much too quickly. The mark II neurotripteline injection was just in development then, but seeing as now they’d properly created one and were beginning to ship a diluted version for use across the country… well, even they couldn’t be sure it is deemed a success.

There are too many prototypes for her to track. The mark II was just one that seemed useful at the time… after all, who needed one hundred and forty thousand, potentially dangerous and lethal by-products of the government’s experimentation on chemical warfare floating around on the streets? To warm up at least part of that population seems reasonable. The dose he had been given was high- too high- but the only other patient it had been tested on is supposedly starting to show signs too, despite the lower dosage spread over a longer amount of time. That encourages Annie.

She does not realise she has flicked her way down to Erwin’s contact until she looks to the screen. Her thumb rests over the call button. It only takes a sharp intake of breath for her to press it and wait for the ringing to stop.

It takes seven rings before the other side crackles. The other voice sounds less than impressed.

 _“I thought you weren’t going to call me anymore.”_ He sighs loudly. Everything is crinkling next to her ear.

“I know, but I need to ask you about the missing walker.” The phone remains silent. “Don’t piss around Smith. I sent you twenty two and I’m only getting nineteen. Two were killed off so where’s the last one?”

_“We only have nineteen left.”_

“Bullshit, Erwin. Don’t piss around here.” She pulls the steady stream of deep breaths away from her ear and places them down on the table, volume increased. “Where is he?”

_“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”_

“Smith,” she purrs, “Smith, you know by now that I’m one for games. But this is getting ridiculous. You’ve known from day one that this one needs an extra eye on him and yet you completely ignore our requests. We just want to know what you're up to.”

 _“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”_ The army man chuckles darkly. _“I don’t know what Hanji does with them. I just tell ‘em what you want ‘em to do and they do it. Then I get you the result which, by the way, only Hanji has legal access to. I’m illegally stealing their data for you.”_

“It’s not like that matters. You’re the one with technically stolen government property on your base. That information is the only thing stopping us from shutting you down.”

The phone stays silent for a heavy moment. Annie leans back in her seat, unwilling to break the cloying silence.

Erwin breaks first, as she expected.

_“What do you want?”_

“I want you to get me the data on that last walker. We shouldn’t have let him go… fucking Bertholdt. Getting all sympathetic.” The chair creaks under her small weight _,_ the tail of her blonde hair brushing the dark fabric. “I want the information you’ve kept back. That or I want it dead. Properly fucking dead. No one can know yet.”

And then he’s laughing down the phone. _“You’re scared. What is it Annie, afraid that we’ll tell everyone that the government is the ones that made ‘em? And, oh, worse of all… that you can bring them back. Or well, you’re tryin’. And you want him back because you’re worried it’s workin’, aren’t you. And then what happens? Will everyone want them back? Or will they want you to bring everyone back who's died so far, reanimate them and then bring 'em -”_

“Smith. Don’t make me test my patience.”

_“No no. No I’m not. I’m just enjoying how panicked you all must be. It's nice.”_

“I swear," she growls, "if you don’t get the two weeks of information I'm missing to us I’m sending troops down there to take them all back and kill anyone that gets in our way. Just send that data.”

 _“Well I’m sorry, Ms Leonhardt, but it doesn’t quite work like that. The only information I’ve got on patient seven is a short report and the preliminary testing on the first day. Nothing past that point. I'm not even sure if it exists any more.”_ There is a quiet clack of keys against a distant keyboard.  _"No, it must still be here. We've been using twenty-two shots a day up until yesterday, when it went down to twenty. Hanji's not taking no data on that walker any more._

Annie chokes on the air around her. She stares into the darkness of the room, pissed off by the screen on the phone blaring harsh light. “What?” she bites, “Nothing?”

_“Nothing. I’ll send you what little data I have, but that’s it.”_

She nods, knowing he cannot see. Everything has gone down the drain. “Kill it. Get rid of the subject permanently. I can’t have anyone know.”

_“Ma'am-“_

“Exterminate it. That’s an order.” She clicks the phone off, watching it die before her eyes.

All she can think of is that it’s a shame. She'll never be able to see if it's even going to work. With a sigh she picks up the phone again, scrolling back down and finding a familiar contact, pressing the 'text' button.

~~PATIENT BODT.D EXTERMINATED. PLEASE MONITOR PATIENT DYER.A CLOSELY FOR SIGNS OF CHANGE.~~


	7. "Jesus said to her, 'Your brother will rise.' Martha said to him, 'I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.'"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Listen- [(Kings Of Leon- Ragoo)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsmxdJmBT14)
> 
>    
>  _I wanna say here's to me, gonna change the world_  
>  _Now I wanna play 'til they kicking down the door_  
>  _And I'll be alright long as I ain't seen it all_  
>  _And I'mma hold on tight to that night we had a ball, we had a ball._  
> 

It was the day before The Rising.

Amilie saw her parents off, standing at Jean’s front door and waving as they pulled away in their babbling Corsa. The small front garden was overgrown, as always, but the last day of December held some mystical beauty. Christmas gone with a flourish of almost-snow-turned-heavy-rainfall left what little of the grass remained white and bitter with frozen dew. She felt that it would snap between her fingers, and she tried to prove it, sitting and watching the last of the engine smog rise through the grills of the iron gate and plucking at the dogsbreath snaking between the cracked flagstones with her fingers.

The town seemed quiet. Early in the morning on the penultimate day of the new year never was loud, even in town, but this year seemed deathly. The church bells rung around that time. Nine-thirty. Not early or late, but the sun would never rise enough through the grey to even catch a chance at warming something.

Amilie shivered and stood up. She wrapped her arms around her chest, turning back into the living room of the house and, for the most part, ignoring Jean who napped with his head back on the sofa. The television blathered on. She sat down next to her brother, and spotting his mug on the small round stool in front of him, tilted it to see what was inside.

Tea, milky and still warm enough to drink, half full. She shrugged and picked it up but grimaced at the hint of sugar when it hit the back of her tongue.

Jean grunted in his light sleep. “Was drinkin’ that,” he groaned, “make your own.”

“Too lazy. Maybe later.” She finished the mug and put it back down. Her legs travelled to meet her chest, arms swinging around to keep the heat in. “Besides,” she smiled, “I like pissing you off.”

One sleepy eye cracked open. A small smirk followed. “Language.” He warned, no venom. “ You’re a nasty piece of work.”

“I try.”

She left it there, watching the smiling man with pepper hair and a barely hidden gut make some sort of shitty bread. It looked grim, dried bits of what looked like rabbit droppings running through. The volume was too low to find out what it really was, but her mind liked to think he was tossing in some real nasty crap for the shrivelled old lady to shove into her prune mouth. At least the cow looked like she enjoyed it. The man drank her nodding in as though it were aged wine.

Jean fell back asleep quickly. His head fell back against the cushions, the awkward bend of his neck causing a faint snore but his mouth hung to combat the problem. Amilie could see the faint line of a scar under his HMV tee. It was still pink, but pretty cool against the stiff muscle and fading tan of his latest mystery trip. She poked it.

“Is it hurting?” She teased, grinned. Jean huffed and mumbled. It made no sense so she poked it again. “Is it hurting?” She repeated with a stifled laugh.

“Fuck off.”

“Language.”

“I’ll language you, little shit.” Her thigh pinged with his back-handed slap, a painless soft sound drowning the boring old people cooking what now looked like fruit vomit. She squealed, laughed, and then hit him back in the arm. Jean yelped, very unmanly but hilarious enough to taint his next words. “Now get the fuck off of my couch!”

Amilie slapped him again, Jean fully awake and holding his arm in pain. “Make me tea and I’ll think about it.” She bargained.

 Jean rolled his eyes. “Get off my couch and make your own damn tea. Compromise.”

Huffing, Amilie stood. She cast Jean a mean glance. “I hate you.”

And for a moment he almost looked pained, like whatever she said had hit him had been as hurtful as what caused the scar. But he caught himself, hand on his heart and eyes blurred but bright in their tired joke. “I’m so hurt,” he whined, “no wonder you chose to spend the week with me.”

“So done with your shit.” She laughed and her hand raised to give the final salute of a truce. She stood and made her way through the dining room and into the kitchen at the back of the terraced house.

Her eyes unfocused to the boiling kettle. Amilie didn’t think for a short moment and instead took the silence, let it simmer. It clicked and she let herself come back to the frozen cracks painting the window out into the barren garden. In the end she made one for herself and for him, purposefully dumping the sugar into the uglier mug so she wouldn’t forget which one was his. The teaspoon fogged with the heat.

“It’s not that interesting, y’know.” She jumped at his voice, spinning around and watching him slide up past the strange small step into the dining room, leaning against the table and ignoring the chair. “I only got it caught when I were fixing a Jeep. Levi were more concerned that I bled on the uniform. Ain’t from anything dangerous.”

Amilie nodded. “We still worried. Mum especially, she thought that you’d-“

“Nah, don’t worry. Weren’t like that.” Jean cut in, shaking his head to remove the memory. “Stupid really, you don’t have to worry.”

She took both mugs and walked back into the dining room with them, handing his over and pulling out one of the chairs, sitting backwards on it. “I know. But you didn’t say much. Everything got shitty when you went away.” He looked up from the rim of his tea, and Amilie thought he almost looked apologetic. “It’s not you, just… things. Everything.”

Her gaze slipped to the ripples in her mug. The steam rising from her drink felt as warm as the hand that slipped onto her back, rubbing reassuring swirls between her shoulder blades. She looked up to Jean, half a foot taller and smiling gently, and sighed. He tilted his head to the small hallway. “Go upstairs and get any work you have done.” His voice was low and gentle, instructive but not pushing. It was just right, like guidance. “And when it’s done we’ll find a way to watch the neighbours fireworks, ‘kay? We can go see Eren or something tomorrow.”

“Promise?” Amilie let herself be calmed by the gentle snort and the pat on the arm, like a lost memory he’d repeated until she couldn’t forget.

“Promise,” he pursed. “The bastard missed you, y’know. He weren’t the only one and all.”

Jean had a way of smiling without smiling. How one person could tell her that everything would be okay without saying a word was beyond her. It hurt… but in a good way.

“Right.” Her voice cracked, but she still nodded, taking the tea with her up the steep stairs and heading to the room dedicated as hers to the left.

That was where she cried.

Hours slipped past and she had no clue what to do, her time spent between trying to do what little work she had from school and creeping back to her bed to forget that she had to act strong. Like him. As her parents would want her to, forgetting the pressure she felt to choose a life she was not sure she wanted- and she envied him.

Amilie envied Jean his freedom, the ways he knew what to do with himself even if it seemed selfish or wrong. Even if other people weren’t happy, he did what he wanted, not to prove to anyone but to prove to himself that his dreams meant something to him. The ability to be what he wanted to be, and then to act as though she would be the same- could be the same.

And yet she couldn’t. What Amilie had was a sheet of paper asking her what she wanted to do with her life and ten teachers forcing a decision. The doors were open but there was nothing there. She answered each question correctly but without the heart to want them to be. In the end she would grow bored and dump the pen, retreat back under the covers of her bed and sleep for a short while, restless and uncomfortable in the light, another way to try and mask a future she was not sure she wanted to decide on- when all she wanted was to be like him.

And she envied him his freedom.

The fourth time she woke up in this daze, she noticed the door of her room was slightly ajar and the light from the stairway loomed over what little was left through her window. The covers were bundled by her head, toes revealed and she wiggled them in the cold of the evening. None of her work was done but she did not care, purposefully avoiding it as she got up and changed her shirt to a thick jumper, and her socks to a pair of disgusting woolly things with paw prints at the bottom that her mum had bought for her.

A shadow jumped past the open crack in her room. Calling his name, her voice splintered.

“Yeah I’m in here,” he replied from his room. “Some idiots are setting some up in the park right next to the graves. Police will probably turn up soon.”

She chuckled and looked out of the door, and seeing her brother with his feet up on the windowsill in his room, leaning back on a creaking chair with a cigarette between his fingers, decided to join him in laughing at the scene below their window.

There were three men, one with armfuls of colourful sticks painted with other vibrant colours. Another had a box by his feet, lighter in one hand and a beer in the other, laughing at the last man who had his back to the cold ground, a bad roll-up between pursed lips. Amilie realised that this was probably weed. Stupid dickheads.

“They been there long?” She asked.

Jean took a drag of his own cigarette, letting the smoke drift up whilst he talked. “Twenty minutes or so. I swear if they aim one towards my window…” He took another breath, voice lower than before, almost to himself but almost also a question to Amilie. “Wonder if I shot a firework if it would go up.”

“Dunno. Not from here, I don’t think.” Jean hummed to her response, shuffling back. They watched as the men dug the sticks into the ground, thankfully none pointing to Jean’s house, but they were still close, the threat of being deafened looming large.  Amilie sat on the bed behind her brother and watched him sip away. She noticed how his hair had been cut, the back of it pretty badly done. She smiled. “What’s the time?”

“Half seven.” He groaned. “Was thinking of making some pasta or something. Got those crap Bird’s Eye nuggets in the fridge.”

She laughed, and through her laughter-blurred eyes she noticed him smiling too. “You spoil me.”

He didn’t even answer. Jean knocked the cigarette out on the side of the chair and stood up with the butt still in his hand, and almost made it to the door before he stopped and looked back at her.

His smile held some stupid sense of knowing she’d never seen in him. For once he seemed older than his age, not clever but wiser than she knew of him, the things he’d seen and the actions he’d taken finally catching up in a way that meant more than being frightened or self-loathing. The drawn skin, the rise of his eyebrow and the furrow that caused under the blond hair that matched hers; they were new and comforting, someone she’d never seen before in him but still something she desperately needed. Jean was the other side she never knew existed. But there he was, the proof that bad things could happen and yet, just like him, she could live past it and grow into a stronger person. Stronger, at least, externally.

“I’ll put them on, you keep an eye on the dicks outside.”

“Yessir.” She mocked her salute and took his chair just as the sound of footsteps took him down.

Amilie watched the guys piss around outside. They sometimes disappeared behind the wall only to return with another couple of opened bottles, normally green, but once clear and tall and round. They chugged that down with grimaces, one huddling over himself with a series of moans and laughter from the other blokes.

Jean had left the pack of cigarettes down by the bottom of his chair and she picked them up. Marlboro. She plucked one out, lighter than she thought it would be. It was slipped into the pocket of her jeans.

For a while the men acted as her entertainment. The darkness never overtook them for some reason, the bald head of one man constantly reflecting the phosphorescent street lamps, whatever they smoked mapping their constant path like a ghost above their heads. She could live like that; just observing the world as it went past, not doing anything in particular but still taking it in like a magpie, ready to come down and take everything those people had before they realised what they had missed, to carry it away and hoard it as a glowing memory. From the way the men threw the still alight butts too close to the pile of unsteady fireworks to the way they stumbled around both drunk and something else, she could tell it would all go wrong. But she couldn’t bring herself to care.

“They’re in.” Amilie ignored Jean’s voice, still watching. “Just put them in, should be fifteen minutes I guess.” He slid around her to pick up the packet and then went to lie on his bed.

“Cool,” she remarked. “They’re completely pissed. Someone’s gonna get hurt.”

“Let ‘em. Absolute idiots. I’m getting off this street as soon as I find somewhere else. I swear if they break something-”

 Her eyes left the men for a moment. “Okay okay, chill your shit,” Amilie chuckled. Jean clicked his lighter.

“Nah, I’m serious. As soon as I’ve got enough money I’m moving to France. Getting one of those old barns in the middle of a field with no ‘lectricity and a well.  Live like a hermit.”

“You are a bloody hermit.” Amilie snorted.

“A hermit with a gun license and a house.” Another cigarette was lit, the fresh smoke strong but soothing in a way it shouldn’t be. Jean smirked at her, resting his head back on the pillows whilst she watched. “‘m serious though.”

They stayed that way for a while, just relaxing, not doing anything important. When she looked back at those final few hours before midnight hit, she realised how calm they were.

Looking back on that night, the world did not busy itself in preparation or give some horrible vibe for the impending tragedy. It just let the people have their fun, let them enjoy what little they had left of a normal world. The men outside drank and smoked and laughed. Next door Amilie heard the old couple with their grown up twin daughters have a hearty drink to the sounds of a cooked dinner and a repeated soundtrack mixing Sinatra, Tom Jones and Auld Lang Syne over and over until they became a blur of soft jazz and marching bands. Jean lit up, brought up the pile of shit he’d cooked up, ate with her. The pasta was left in the pot, the chicken nuggets that weren’t really chicken still on the baking tray and they ate it like that. A bottle of ketchup tipped up onto the lid blowing raspberries every time they wanted it. Jean’s phone went at around eleven. He had a quick call with Eren who apparently was slightly drunk and spending some time with Levi as a strange kind of brother-in-law get together, reminiscing over the year and complaining at how it just seemed like a year where everyone lost someone.

Two bottles of beer straight from the fridge just a few minutes before twelve. He had handed one to her and took one for his own. She sat on his knee as though she were six and not bordering on ten years on top of that age. Jean opened the cap by smacking it against the window ledge. It got everywhere. The men outside crowed. The police hadn’t come once, the bastards. Amilie sent a text from her phone to her parents, wishing them a happy new year and telling them she hoped they were having fun at the work do, wherever it was. She didn’t tell them about the beer.

The men lit the fireworks too early. The bald guy hit the tallest man and called him a wanker. That was funny. Next door crooned the same song they’d been playing for hours, but this time it was loud and drunk and Jean found it in himself to attempt the hum along as the fireworks outside screamed. Downstairs the television was still on and a reporter said the same thing they say every year to the background of three million pounds of explosives to backdrop the London Eye. The idiots that paid thousands to see it from a stuffy pod were probably not enjoying the fact that now they had to wait for another half an hour after the display had finished to get off of the damn thing and head home.

Jean fell asleep again, Amilie still on his lap. He was too bony, she had to get off but couldn’t find the strength to move much further than to his bed. He wouldn’t mind, she knew. The older brother complex was something she had turned into a fine art. For someone so blunt, he really could be a sap and she knew it.  So instead she pulled the blankets kicked to the bottom up to her chin, grabbing one pillow to hug tightly and shut her eyes as the men outside finally got into a shouting match with the police.

 

Jean was the first to wake up. The slamming of something against his front door was one of those noises he couldn’t sleep past. Like a bad alarm clock at seven in the evening. It just pissed him off in a way that shouldn’t have been legal. His neck hurt, his back was cramping and his head ached for another cigarette to combat the forgotten stench of morning breath. This just put him that one step further down the ladder of ‘I can’t be bothered today’.

He rolled off of the chair and found Amilie lying in his bed. She gripped the covers tightly.

The door banged one more time. “Okay… Jesus fuck.” He rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand and took the steep stairs two at a time. The door slammed in the lock again, whatever it was desperate. Jean span on his heel at the last corner and raced to the door.

Through the small pane of glass at the top he could see the shadow of a figure. He sighed, opening the locks and swinging the door open.

Hands. Hands shot out at him. They gripped his shirt and pulled him forward into the face of something rotten smelling. He pushed it away with his hands on its chest. The thing moaned. A human, groaning and writhing to bring their faces closer together.

Its jaws snapped, rotten teeth and black tongue poking out and attempting to bite. It eased away with every push Jean shoved against it, sometimes rough and sharp and some long, biceps flexing, legs kicking out underneath the cold stare and stiff body.

He pushed it away long enough to stand. It clambered up straight after him but with a shove Jean slammed it backwards, stumbling and tripping past the step and into his small front garden.

Jean slammed the door on it. The person moaned again.

“Shit… shit shit shit.” His eyes searched for where he’d left the landline phone last. It sat on the small table next to the sofa and he picked it up, hurriedly dialling triple nine. There was no answer. The dial tone was longer than it should have been before it just cut away into silence.

The television was till on. Not working. Just static.

His breath was so loud it hurt. The steps he took between the living room and the phone line in the kitchen seemed too short, the red light flashing for the message it held.

He pressed the button.

It took a few seconds for the thing to realise what he’d done, but after the false pleasant a broken, “You have one new message. Message one,” came a scream.

Then a sob.

Then a call of a static filled _“it’s okay it’s okay just get out. Get out now!”_ that ended with what sounded like a hand running against the microphone to the backdrop of pounding footsteps. Jean leant his hands against the counter and stared at the blinking light, noises of smashing glass, groaning and screams and, saddest of all, the sound of his mum crying.

He’d heard it once before when he was young. Two in the morning when his parents had been arguing and he couldn’t sleep so he’d sat at the top step and waited for them to finish. She’d come up first with her eyes red and choking every time a tear ran. She ushered him away with a kiss on the forehead and that was that.

His mum had cried alone in her room that night. His dad was on the sofa for some time. That was before Amilie, before everything seemed to go back to how it should have been. Jean never got used to the sound but for some time it was easy to listen to. Then it got better and he’d noticed. There was no crying, no arguments at the bottom of the stairs he couldn’t sleep through and couldn’t understand. Hearing it again, the same chokes, the same whimpers of pain… just as his name was ushered out around the crunching of leaves. It made it no better. The easiness of that pain was gone. It should never have been that easy.

 _“Jean,”_ it whispered, then choked. His breath hitched. _“Jean I- I love you. I love you too Amilie I love you both so much. We both do,”_ she sniffed and her voice began to break around a wet whimper. Someone far away screamed, His mum whimpered and everything sped up, on fast forward and rushed as whatever it was got close and closer and- _“S-ss-stay safe,”_ his mum took one last long shaking breath and finished her last words with it. _“I love you… I- I love you so much. Look after my baby, Jean. You look after her, please. Please, Je-“_

“Jean?” Amilie, her voice full on concern stood behind him. She looked young, drowned. Her hair was tied up but messy with thin whisps of baby hair floating around her face, golden baby hair. Too innocent. Too young. “What was that?”

“Go to your room.” Her eyes shot wide at his cool demand but she nodded, turning around and walking up the stairs. He watched her walk away before opening a drawer and pulling out his gun. He ducked, hand grappling for the Glock he’d taped to the bottom and pulled it away when he found it, tape ripping. That he pulled off, then unlocked the thing in his hand.

His incentive was simple. Get rid of the monster slamming at the door then take her to the barracks where she’d be safe, where there would be enough people who knew how to handle themselves around her to do what he planned to do, what his mum wanted him to do. That was all he wanted; those words were the only thing he listened to. Hey muffled everything like water.

The door shook on its hinges again, but he waited for a moment, grabbing a pillow from the sofa and holding it out as he reached for the door handle. It turned under his palm and swung open with force, whatever was on the other side leaning against it until it fell through at the first sign of give. Jean shuffled back and let it fall. It collapsed and he jumped it, pillow to its skull and gun in his right hand, pulling the trigger against the slight muffle fabric and feather provided. The thing struggled as though it were suffocating but he didn’t care. The trigger was pulled and with slight resistance but it was done. Loud, but not as loud as it should have been. Bloody, but no pool of blood… just guts on his floor. Long dead stench, nothing alive about it.

At the steady beat of footsteps, Jean didn’t even raise his head. His heartbeat pounded with it. They beat in time until they ended with a gasp that stopped his heart.

Jean had never seen Amilie look frightened of him. Before, that was.

Her mouth pursed, whimpering in her throat. A tear rolled down her cheek and hit the floor as he face dropped to stare downwards. Jean sat over the dead body, gun limp in his hand, the other pressing down firmly on the head that lay still underneath him. He didn’t move.

“A-Amilie?” He tried, calling her name and trying to soften his hard glare.

It took some time. She cried for a little while and everything was silent except for the sobs. Every so often a hand would come up to rub at her eyes, and Jean would believe the tears had stopped. But they hadn’t. They just came back in another wave. Tears rolled in one after another after another and they didn’t stop until something dried up inside Amilie’s chest and she sniffed loudly.

Face still to the floor she mumbled one question. “Is it dead?”

On the floor, not knowing what was happening, Jean had no answer. He rolled off of the body and stood, stumbling towards her and dropping the gun with a thud as soon as he was far enough away.

He sank before Amilie, held her arms so she couldn’t make her oak eyes any redder and turned his eyes to express how sorry he was without words. Jean never wanted her to see that. He didn’t want to do it but instinct took over, the need to feel the gun in his hand was stronger than it should have been… he had just reacted to it.

But the job was done. What threatened him lay dead. Unsure of what it meant or if he would even get in trouble for killing him- he didn’t care. It saved her. What he had close was safe and alive and that was what mattered. He pulled his arms away and wrapped them around Amilie as she stood and she returned it.

Amilie hiccupped. Her face was blotchy as she pulled away but it had hardened, more like him than he had seen. Jean didn’t like it. “We’re leaving.” Amilie told herself, loud enough for Jean to hear. “Ten minutes.”

 

Two months after the start of The Rising, and Amilie wore the red cap that the officers did.

She ignored what was going on inside, much preferring the drizzle of the threat of spring showers and keeping herself safe under the awning of the main office where the others totalled their head count. Her name for it. After all, they could only kill them if they got ‘em in the globe. She pulled out another stolen cigarette and lit.

“You’re too young to smoke.”

Amilie ignored the deep voice, knowing it was just Erwin having another ‘replacement father’ moment. Instead she took a drag, holding it between the two fingers of the right hand like Jean did and blowing the smoke up to heaven.

“Did Jean give you-“

“Of course he didn’t.” An inhale. “But he started earlier so he can’t complain.”

Erwin pulled up alongside Amilie, hands in the pockets of his khakis, identical cap that looked like a smeared dollop of ketchup with a small pair of wings at the front on his head. His shining blue gaze stretched out across the tarmac and to the fence of ply wood and barbed wire. Erwin sighed. “I told him to quit.”

“He did. He started again after Kabul.  I don’t know why. Git’s been through worse.” The cigarette at halfway she stopped and stubbed it out on the wall, bending it but still keeping it intact. This was Jean’s half.

Erwin, however, looked down at Amilie. He had the stare of a boss, cold and cruel and calculating in every way. He watched like a hawk but stored it in his head. At every night like this, he was the elephant in the room. Erwin was the unspoken subject, the rumours of his incompliance to the London troupes when they asked for backup famous, the theories on why they hadn’t come with everything a rogue government had to bulldoze the place as they had done to others was vast and manic. He heard and saw everything, knew everything. One wrong word from any mouth and he was there to listen. One sentence spoken among the laughter and beer would be heard. Erwin doesn’t forget.

“What do you mean ‘been through worse’?” He questioned her in every way, from his eyes to the confused parting of his mouth and the tilt of his groomed head to the right.

Amilie shrugged. “The scar on his arm. Said it was an accident. At least it weren’t as bad at the car bomb.”

“That was a bullet wound.” Erwin stared out to the fence once more. Behind it they could hear the gentle moans of a rotter. Amilie’s eyes widened. “Accidentally shot a civilian. A kid. Someone fired back, just scraped his arm, thank fuck. Eren had one fired at him, Jean jumped in front. Took one to the chest, but he had a vest on. Was just bruising.”

“Shit.” Erwin’s expression told her that he was the one to break the news. He didn’t look like he minded.

“I thought he would have told you. He doesn’t lie well.”

Amilie shook her head, turning around and stepping to the door, palm on the glass. “He’s shit at lying. But if he has to he will. I just wish he’d tell me-“ her voice faded away in her throat, sitting instead in her mind. She stepped inside. Erwin nodded in her departure, and noticed half of a cigarette on the floor.

 

It was a horrible month. Rain didn’t stop, storms rolled in every night and the walkers they’d caught and stored in the reinforced steel bunkers rattled on at the noise. Erwin had received a letter that told him that they would hand the rotters over the next day anyway.

It was one more job, one more stab in the dark before the televisions came back on and they were flooded with the government appealing for the public’s support when everyone knew they gartered none. What had they done but protect their own arses? Nothing. Not one word. But for some reason they thought they had a fix… not like Amilie thought the rotters needed fixing. Dead was dead was dead. That was the only word that counted. If a snowy eye and bad breath said anything for the state of a rotter’s humanity, she’d judge that it died when they did. And that, clearly, was the day each body had written on their gravestone before their epitaph.

Jean threw a pump action shotgun at her followed quickly by a box of bullets, half full. She nodded her thanks, watching as he nodded with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. The curl of smoke danced behind him.

She was like him now. Three inches shorter but strong and lithe, muscled in the sort of way that reminded her of a ballerina. Toned and rough but poised. Her back held strong, the khakis that once hugged a younger but fuller figure now loose and tied around her waist, white vest like Eren’s underneath. Sasha had told her one too many times that she keeps forgetting that Jean has a sister and wondering ‘when did Jean grow his hair so long?’ She didn’t mind. Sasha was right, they looked stupidly identical- same almost-brown hair with sun-bleached tips, angular jaws, golden predatory eyes and a strong nose above thin lips… both like their dad, eyes from their mum. May their souls rest, she thought.

The back of the Jeep was opened up, Eren climbing in after Levi and dragging the utility belt soaked in knives behind him. Amilie decided that she’d rather sit with them, knowing that if Levi decided to talk at all, at least it would be entertaining. She’d rather that than another lecture on just how wonderful the rotter’s eyes were and the smell of scotch.

Only God knew where Moblit managed to find his liqueur.

Eren grinned at Amilie as she hauled herself up. Levi, his skin pale but also dark in a way that was uncharacteristically dirty, nodded his hello. Amilie pulled the gun up after her, setting it down next to her, on her left side with Eren opposite.

“S’ good you’re here.” Levi caught her gaze and held it. He didn’t blink. “We’ve changed plan. You’re going in front with me an’ Hanji. Eren’s taking your spot.”

She huffed and rolled her eyes away. “You’ve got to be shitting me. And you’re only telling me this now because…”

“Because you’re better bait than Eren is. The git’s too clumsy and I don’t want any deaths. Including the rotters, jes' a few arms blown off. Search an’ rescue, like.” Levi stared pointedly at Eren. “Out.”

Eren sighed, shuffling himself from the Jeep and giving Amilie a final wave. “See you later, yeah.”

“Whatever.” She leant back on the chairs. Eren huffed a laugh. Even Levi breathed his contentment.

Twenty minutes later and Sasha, Erd, Gunther and Petra had decided to climb in and settle themselves down. Mike settled himself in the driver’s seat and glanced back every few moments. Everyone waited for Erwin’s signal, as always. But he wasn’t there, staying back to wait with a few others, just in case something were to go wrong. Hanji was acting as field medic as usual, their sidekick probably drunk. Poor man needed to be, dealing with Hanji.

By ten they were out. It wasn’t far, perhaps a fifteen minute drive down an almost completely abandoned A12, and into the village.

Areas like this were where most of the damage was done.

Most of the houses were old, beautiful. The Pub with No Name stood proud in monochrome opposite the Church of the Virgin Mary. But most of it was ruined, black bags of rubbish everywhere and doors hanging loose from houses. Deslolate and creepy, a ghost village that bore the full brunt of The Rising.

Levi climbed out over everyone, small but thick frame wiggling through the small group of people to reach the back of the Jeep and the line of knives Eren had left. He knelt and put them on, finishing with the gun. It was notorious for only being used on people who were about to die. Grim, they all called it.

The radio in the cabin bleeped.

 _“Car two ready. Over.”_ Jean’s voice was muffled over the speaker.

“Car one here. Waiting for confirmation from Squad Leader. Over.” The com bleeped, Mike turning to Levi at the back. “Permission?”

“Not yet. I want the truck here with the doors open before we go anywhere.” Mike nodded and stared out of the front again, down the winding and potholed road. Levi fiddled with the knives, sheathing one quickly. He didn’t look up from his task as he spoke.

“I don’t want deaths today. This is the last thing we have to do t' deal with the rotters. You can move to Azerbaijan after that I don’ give a shit. No guns unless completely necessary, except for the back group to draw out any rotters. Work in formation to take them down then get them straight back out here. No wandering off, no investigating without a partner for cover. Petra, Erd. I want you to bait the large group. Mike and I will do the church. Sasha stay with Amilie at the back, do a sweep of the graveyard before coming to the church to join me. Keep the shotgun on you but don’t use it, use our hedged-in formation. Stick to the Glocks. The best bet is to act as a lure and then get Truck Team to load 'em. We’re aiming to get the hoard here loaded, unhurt. That’s hundred for each, fifty rotters hopefully. Five thousand split between seventeen…” Levi looked to his fingers for a moment but gave up. “A bit, at least.” He shrugged. “Erwin can sort it after his cut.” Headlights blinked by the bonnet of the Jeep, and Levi nodded at the driver. Grey eyes scanned the group, all silent. “If anyone does die,” he added, “scream before you do it so I’ll know. I’ve got three bullets in Grim.”

_“Car two. Permission, Levi? Over?”_

“Mike.” The frizz of blond hair in front bobbed, and he turned the radio on, the rasp of static burning Amilie’s ears. “Levi here, permission granted. Start heading over now. We’ll meet in ten. Over and out.”

“How long are you giving them?” Petra readjusted the Velcro on her vest as she talked.

“They’re at the edge of the Fenn Wright racetrack. Should take just under ten at a steady jog. They’re pushing any stragglers from behind to the gate, drawing any out.”

“Got it.” Petra nodded and climbed out from the back. Gunther followed and Amilie slid out after him. Erd sat around and did up the backs of his boots. The fog was thick. They milled around for a short while. Amilie examined the church. It was small and old, graves at the front upturned, and just a short distance away she could see the faint outline of a rotter limping beside a tree. It couldn’t see them. She loaded her guns as they all did, casually slipping past Levi to pull a knife from his back. He turned to glare, lifting a finger and beckoning with it. She leant in.

His voice was low and gravelly, dark hair tickling her cheek as she leant in close. “I’m letting you take it, but if it doesn’t come back as clean as you’ve got it now I’ll wring yer neck. Got that, kid?”

She chuckled. “Aye sir.”

Sasha snapped her gun on the gate of the church. Erd went to join her, leaning against the wall. No birds were out despite the daytime. No sun stuck around for more than a few fleeting moments. They waited for a small indication of what to do from Levi, who sat with his legs dangling from the boot of the Jeep and flicked a butterfly knife between his hands.

Then without warning he stood. Two fingers pointed to the gate, and Amilie watched and admired the way he seemed to effortlessly know how the world revolved around him. He was not external, he was central and god-like, the reason why everything around Levi fit him like a glove. He changed for nothing.

Sasha sidled up next to Amilie and they shared a warm smile. Mike and Levi had already snuck their way around a few rotters to get to the church. Petra and Erd nodded as they walked past, slipping to the right and clicking. Three rotters noticed their presence and stumbled over.

“Head left. We’ll push that group onto Jean’s path.” The toothy grin of Amilie’s partner was infectious. She smiled too, blonde hair next to deep red. Guns went off somewhere behind them. They slid past a set of trees at a nice pace, Amilie slipping into the viewpoint of the walkers as Sasha pushed behind in case of danger. Routines like this were practiced all of the time. Herding, it was called, and like sheep they had to make sure the dogs knew exactly what to do in every case, with every lamb. Where to be to push them on, where to stand to slow them or make them change direction. Amilie weaved deliberately between the trees, dangerously close to the lunging rotters. Sasha slipped from the left to the right, covered by Amilie’s distraction and as soon as she reached the right side she waved her arms. Dead eyes turned to her.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jean running behind Sasha, patting her on the back and running forward. He yowled. They scrambled after him, leaving Amilie behind for something a bit noisier and more interesting. Jean smiled as he ran, lopsided and toothy. Wolfish. But awesome, like the sort of smile she had seen in a movie once, where the rugged hero gave to the love interest before he falls to a pretend death… or something else equally stupid. He was stupid. But a fun sort of stupid.

Hiding a giggle behind her hand she headed to the church. Sasha was following, she was sure. Footsteps followed her, and the woman was a silent one unless it came to anything that interested her. She didn’t bother to turn. Over the brick fence the group were ducking in and out of the truck to lure the walkers in. Eren took Erd’s hand in a raised fist and shook it tightly. Erd’s blond hair fell out of the tight pony tail, hair leaking everywhere.  He smiled. Amilie took the small steps up to the old and open doors just as they pulled back to regroup.

 

The date was 21st November 2010. Amilie Georgina Kirschtein was fifteen years old, sixteen in February and she wanted Eren to teach her how to drive as good as Mikasa used to. She was five foot six inches and her favourite band was Kings Of Leon, her ‘Ragoo’, him ‘King Of The Rodeo’ or ‘Four Kicks’ or ‘The Bucket’ Amilie liked them all. She hated white chocolate but liked it when they dyed it pink and blue in Thornton’s in town, because it tasted funny and it seemed stupid for it being so expensive when it literally just tasted of chemical strawberry.

She never put sugar on her pancakes. Only lemon. She’d never kissed anyone. Didn’t think she wanted to, wasn’t sure. Jean knew, teased her… in the way that he could get away with it. He was teased by her just as much.

 _“As thick as the skin on my heel,”_ their mum had said. Wasn’t sure if that was an insult to their intelligence or an endearment for how close they were.

She had read ‘You’re a Bad Man, Mr. Gum’ so many times she could recite it. On her grave was the last few lines of ‘The Owl and the Pussy Cat.’ Jean had read that to her when she cried when she was young. She had been sadder the day he had told her that in a past time he’d wanted to die than when Jean told her that her parents were probably dead and he didn’t know where to find them- the day everything went wrong.

She had no clue who she wanted to be. Except she wanted to be like him. Not do what he did, not to see the things he had seen and do the things he regretted; but if she did end up doing that then she’d still be happy. Strong, certain, bullish and a complete asshole. But funny and stupid and caring deep down. She really loved him for it. Loved him and told him in her own way... by never saying it out loud.

Had a knack for chess. Erwin got real quiet when she beat him. Allergic to bad romance and anything green. Clever but not sure what to do with it. Great at everything but too scared to place her skill. Jack of all trades, master of uncertainty. He never went to her funeral. Couldn’t. Hanji practically forced him under kicking and screaming. He was lucky his blood type was common.

Hers wasn’t so common. Not like that mattered when Grim only had two bullets left in the barrel.

On her back, screaming, Levi held the scythe and she had never known such a swell of ironic happiness. Levi looked sorry but sure. His gift was letting her leave everything that hurt. Pain was the only thing, pain everywhere and blood and more pain. She cried but couldn’t remember what for.

There was no silence. Everything rang. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it was relief. Colours and shapes were coming together and working with one another in a way she had never known, bleak euphoria. Her mind was escaped and ran from reality with the bullet. But there was one thought that dominated her slow fade.

At least it wasn’t him. At least it didn’t land on his shoulders and at least he could cry and blame someone that wasn’t himself, crawl back into the dark hole of self-loathing until he withered with unnecessary pain. At least he could pretend that the outcome had nothing to do with him. He was dying with her, her life leaving… and it was almost like she stuck around for a moment, like God had seen her in His house and let her see just what life may be like after she was gone. Something flew onto Jean’s side and ripped him apart whilst she died. Their eyes never parted.

Amilie remembered something about the head living for ten seconds after it was cut off. She wondered if this was the same. Probably not. He screamed her name, voice raw and straining through their identical pain, their bodies alike in so many ways, lives similar and minds linked in the strangest sense. Two people who knew each other inside out, who could feel each other’s deaths overtaking them as his hand stretched out over cold flagstones to her. Crawling fingers. Dead eyes in three places. Two rotters and her. He screamed her name. He screamed her name.

He screamed her name until he couldn’t scream, until her name sat in the rafters and on the alter and in the breath of every person and in the smoke of the gun, in the eyes of the rotters and her heart. His words, her family. The only person she had left. In death she smiled.

It couldn’t have made her any happier.

 

_\--_

_And hand in hand on the edge of the sand_

_They danced in the light of the moon,_

_The moon,_

_The moon,_

_They danced in the light of the moon._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY.
> 
> I should really have uploaded the chapter for Stutter first but I've whacked this out in less than a day and I love it so I needed to upload this first. I have to sit at the top of the stairs to upload this since my room doesn't get the wifi signal...
> 
> We ended up moving house twice in the space of two weeks- the first time was to temporary aaccommodationsince the sale on our house was earlier than the moving in date for where we had bought. Then something happened since the people who were buying the people who were buying our house's house (confusing I know) didn't pay their deposit until the day they were moving. So everything got held up and we couldn't pay the full amount until they did that and so our date was pushed back. But we're in now, and it's lovely. We moved moved in on the 26th and the internet was supposed to be up then, but it's only just been done today. I'm really sorry for not uploading anything at all in this time but I've only been back at school for three weeks and they've finally realised that sometimes what is written is sometimes also explicit, so I couldn't access A03 there. But now I promise that Stut should have chapter 16 by Saturday, and the trial one that I need to change then name of 'cause it sucks should have the first three finished by next Sunday. The next two chapters for this are also about three quarters done so they should be out quickly too and by the end of this month I have Halloween break so I'll do some writing then. I'm just sorry that you had to wait so long.
> 
> Many apoligies. I'll bake a cake.


	8. "'At the resurrection they neither marry nor are in given marriage but are like the angels in heaven.'"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Listen- [(William Fitzsimmons- I Don't Feel It Anymore (Song of the Sparrow))](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mld3NLHNebw)
> 
>    
>  _We'll fall just like stars being hung by only string_  
>  _Everything, everything here is gone._  
>  _No map can direct how to ever make it home_  
>  _We're alone, we're alone, we're alone._  
>  _Oh, take it all way_  
>  _I don't feel it anymore._  
>  _Oh take it all away._

Eren sits in the dark.

His mind is tangled, body shaking and rolling with the nightmare that has left him heaving icicle air next to Mikasa, her cold skin pressed up against his body, clammy. Images flood him in the darkness, bitter and throbbing; the blood he has seen the same blood pumping through him, blue and acidic. Everything burns with the residue horror. With a flick of his wrist, he takes the back of his hand and begins wiping it first over his eyes, then taking it up to the overgrown hairline and mopping away the running sweat threatening to redden his eyes further. It dries on him.

Besides him she stays quiet; completely still and steady, with no hint of movement anywhere in her frozen limbs. His horrors have left her unaffected.  She is his core, both inside his mind and out, her danger perceivable in the faint hours that feel so similar to him, reminiscent so similarly to her final ones. The ones that had nothing to do with her now fading away, being replaced and rejuvenated in a foreign new horror that is scaring him more than anything he has experienced before, more than his mistakes and his regrets.

It reminds him of everything. The sheets wrapped tightly and neatly around her waist are so perfectly placed, and he knows they have not moved since last night… He can forget the past two years with a strange sort of ease when she lies there as though she has just passed, as though every mistake has only just been made, the known past an unknown future. He wants the old Mikasa back, who’d tuck her legs up to her chest and yet still try to reach out for him over the bundles of soft night linen and displaced pillows. But with both hands lying over the sheet and pinning her like a soldier between the dark blue quilt… It’s not the same. In the blackness, grappling hands are no longer welcome, pressing fingers not wanted against his skin. The beeps and the arguments, nights on narrow streets and guns in hand, knives in his back pocket; these things are no longer separate. Dreams churning in his mind, twisting and curling on themselves in endless contra-rotating thaumatropes stuck the corneas of his eyes and refusing to go, to rid themselves and let him be in a peace he wishes for but cannot obtain. Their realism is terrifying.

And so he takes shaking breath that leads to him heaving himself up and placing his feet into the rug beneath his feet, digging in his toes between the hoover-flattened shagpile and appreciating the feeling scratching roughly at his soles. The clock in the hallway ticks. His en-suite bathroom still has a leaking tap. _tick-plop… tick-plop._

The robin outside laughs with the dregs of first light. Early spring.

He pings his boxers down his legs and lets them sit around his ankles on the floor. He rubs sleep from his right eye, taking a hazy glance around and trying to find the pile of yesterdays discarded clothes before even daring to bare himself. They sit on the chair in the corner, heaped and creased. Making his way over, he listens to the faint rustle on the bed and the soft sigh of strange life. Everything goes on quickly and without thinking of cleanliness or presentation. He wants out of the house as soon as possible, minimal fuss and minimal pain.

The chiffchaff barks with the robin. The great tit thinks this is amusing.

“Eren?” Mikasa moans from the bed. Fibres rub inside the covers. “Where are you going?”

He doesn’t reply. The gun beneath his worn and only pair of socks is slipped into the loop of his utility belt and putting on the final items of clothing he makes his way to the bathroom, letting the light of the one working lightbulb cast yellow and sickly on everything it touches.

She calls his name again.

The morning starts just as any other would. Eren picks up the toothbrush with some of the bristles missing and the almost empty tube of red, white, and blue, ‘seven amazing effects’, extra whitening toothpaste. The amount is tiny but fresh in his mouth and he scrubs it in until he tastes iron through mint and baking soda, spitting.

Footsteps pad from the bed to the bathroom, the door opening behind him. Eren tries not to see what he had seen so close to him in the dream. In the reflection he can see her- eyes clear, skin so pale, open scars running from a dipping collarbone and underneath the baggy shirt, one nipple coldly perked and peeping blue just over the lazily low neckline, red night-shorts low on pallid hips. Eren shifts his gaze to the line of pink in his sea-foamed spittle as she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and shuffles over.

“You okay?” He doesn’t reply again, scowling into the spit. She frowns at him. “Eren-“

“Not now, ‘kay?” He runs his hand under the cold tap and rubs his face, rubs away the images and the sleep. He ignores her in the mirror. “I’ve got to go.”

He tries to storm loudly around her, trying… trying so hard to not see her snarling when the only look on her face is one of rejection. Mikasa traces him out of the room, grabbing his arm and hoping that he will stop. He doesn’t, and he carries on walking as though her hand were that of a ghost, yanking the jacket hanging on the slightly opened wardrobe door and leaving the bedroom.

“Eren!” She calls. “Eren please.” He stomps down the stairs and she follows. “Eren Torsten Jaeger. You walk out of that door and I swear God-“

But he doesn’t want to talk. He’s heard enough words of contemplation and mutual satisfaction. Every conversation drifts to them, what they should be… how they could be. Eren snaps.

“Get the fuck off my case.” He spins around, green-glass eyes shattering and splintering. His mouth breaks with his discontent. “Please.”

In an instant she races down the stairs to him, looping her cold arms underneath his, gripping his shoulders tight, fingernails digging through every layer. He hangs as though she is lifting him- up and away. “Eren.” She croons. “Eren please just tell me.” He leans all of his weight on her, but she holds him like he weighs nothing.

Eren does not make any move touch her.

“Please… I just want you to tell me…” She sighs into his neck. Eren follows his gaze to the stairs up to the top floor, blurred.

His voice croaks with every breath. “I don’t know what to think anymore,” Eren whispers. “I’m so scared.” And Eren is stepping away, drawing his body from hers without force, slipping. She clings weakly but, as though she were just air, he breaks away without a struggle. His eyes are streaming, like the worn glass shards found on a beach, dripping with salty waves of confusion, pale and opaque with the movement of the world. No attempts are made to wipe them away. Eren goes to the door and clicks open the latches, grabbing the keys hanging from a hook and holding them firmly in his palm.

Mikasa shakes her head, Eren trying not to watch her mouth repeat the same silent cry of _‘no’_. And then, as though she had suddenly woken up, she bursts. Her eyes are wide and white. “Please!” Melancholy rips through her. She is a flurry of arms and legs, pulling him closer to her, trapping him in a grasp like iron. Every bone stiffens to cage him in, to hold him in place until he looks her in the eye. His tears fall silent but shining and he never looks to her face. “Eren I- I love you. Please just look at me.”

“How?” he breathes. “H…H-how can I look at you? It’s not the same.”

“It damn well is. I’m here, it’s me.” Her deathly hand travels to his face, grey against gold. “Look at me.”

He sniffs, and gently his eyes begin to travel up the fabric of her shirt, along the slender line of her neck and over her cheek to her eyes.

They are not grey.

“You’re not the same.”

“No.” She sighs, “I’m not the same. But it’s still me, Eren. I’m here.”

“You’re not the same. This isn’t the same.”

“And you expected it to be? How could-“ Mikasa bites her lip. “How could you think it would be the same? Nothing’s the same. You aren’t the same. But we’re still here, Eren. That’s what matters.”

“Let me g-“

“No! Eren, please. _Please_ just… for once in your damn life listen to me and stand the fuck still.” He stops struggling. Green eyes flicker from hers to the floor, hiding sniffs and blinking away tears that shouldn’t be there.  She reaches her hand to his cheek, wiping them away, not feeling them but feeling their pain. “I hate it when you cry.”

Eren sighs. “I wasn’t crying.”

“Don’t lie, you shit,” she laughs, pseudobulbar. “You were crying.”

“Was not. I’m a fucking grown-arse man.” He sniffs again. His nose flares and drips unattractively. Mikasa only laughs harder, a mask.

“Doesn’t mean you can’t cry like a babby.” And he chuckles quietly, sadly, running his dry pink lips with his tongue and looking to Mikasa in a fleeting glance. “And always in the morning.” Her voice softens. “I thought women were supposed to be the emotional ones.”

The snort of a sniff rings loud through the hallway. Through the top of the door, the early morning light shines through. Some bird croons in the distance, short and sharp.

“What are we going to do with ourselves…” Eren whispers through his tears. His head tilts forward, long hair flopping limply over his eyes- scraggly. Mikasa leans in her head to his and distantly feels the faint pressure of touching skin. She dives into it like the last thing she will ever touch. It is precious, this feeling, this ethereal light far in the distance that still blinds her, still leaves her thinking of how much she wants him, loves, needs him.

“I still want you.” Eren goes silent at her words. His breath stills. Honest desperation. “I’d still have you if you’d let me. I’d feel nothing for you if you’d let me. It’s that or nothing to me now. I can’t go on knowing that the only thing I have left is-“

He hates the idea and yet he does it anyway. He hates himself for it, hates his impulse. The idea is so wrong but he just want to prove it, wants to know… and so he cuts her off with a peck to the lips.

It is so brief she almost misses it in the mixture of emotion and words. Then he does it again, testing her. The closeness is startling, blunt, all Eren, but she cannot feel the press of the lips she knows are warm and slightly chapped. So when he does it again she lunges, pushing hard to try and feel anything, experience anything. She steals his startled moans and uses them as her own, grabs hold of the base of his spine and pushes him into rolling forward against her.

The downturn on his mouth is not felt against her own. She sees it, eyes open and watching him and repeating to herself over and over without stopping, without thought to anything else _I love him I love him I love him_ as every tear in his closed and angry, furrowed eyes filtering away into another snort of pain and anger that bites out through him as he tries his hardest to cling onto her as though she were slipping through his fingers and not already gone. The memory of his actions is not enough to get him to feel. Nothing flows from her.

In the end, Mikasa is the one to pull away from his stilled lips, unable and frustrated. Silent.

Eren pants and sobs. The tears fall freely. His heart wells with the pain, and he knows it is over. Mikasa, normally just as breathless through uncharacteristic forgetfulness, denial, stands and stares as though she had never kissed him in the first place.

“I’m so sorry.”

The tears are cold against his burning skin, drying too quickly. His face freezes under her gorgon gaze, salt petrifying the bags under his eyes, the apple of his cheeks, and lets them sit forever in solid and eternal misery. Her arms slip away, her body shifts to stand back by the stairs and Mikasa lets herself sit on the bottom step as she had once done every morning after they had gotten married, the mornings before that when she had stayed overnight, the sleepless days when he was away, the calls he’d get every so often, head on the bannister as it crinkled beneath her weight.

“I’m so sorry Eren.”

“What are you?” He chokes. “Wh…what have I done t…” he has lost everything; and so he collapses to the floor with every fibre of strength sapped out of his body. “What did I do to deserve this?”

He no longer hides it. He cries. Every tear runs bold across his pain.

Mikasa shushes him from where she sits, his slumped body by the door, hers looking down. Tired, unable to feel but still feeling.

“What did I do wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

The shaky breath that follows hurts Eren. The lining of his throat is raw and horrible. Everything burns.

“I’m so scared.” He admits once more as the choking consumes him. Eren tries to lift himself from the floor. He wobbly shakes, knees somehow now unable to take his weight, and grabs the boots by the door. Every movement of his fingers is shaky, bones stiff, eyes unseeing.

But he knows Mikasa is watching him. Unblinking. Undead.

“Eren,” she croons. Everything sounds so poisonous. “Eren…”

“I’m… I’m going, now. I shouldn’t have done that.” The keys in his hands slip into his pocket with ease, free hand running over the latches with his learned routine. Hands creep up the door, pulling upward.

Behind him, Mikasa stands. She takes a hesitant step towards him, hand outstretched as she watches him disappear before here. “Eren,” she tries again, and this time he cannot deny the softness in her voice, the concern and the confusion in his name that should not be there, residing in something he knows is precious to her. “’Til death d-“

Something begins to burn in Eren, and he snaps. His hand cracks the wall hard at the origin of those words. He coughs a bitter laugh.

“Don’t! Don’t you dare start this now. Don’t you even _dare_ mention them to me now.”

“How could you say that Eren. Those are our _vows_ ; that’s the start of our life, and what are you planning to do? Brush it off like it never happened because we have one little thing stopping us? I’m here. I’m talking to you.”

The words roll off of his back. He does not want to hear them. The scowl plastered on his lips, tightening his brow… Eren is so, so angry. At himself, at what he has let himself do. He shakes his head.

“What don’t you fucking get?! Mikasa is fucking dead. _You_ are dead. Gone.” Fingers scrape at his eyes and red trails behind it. Eren’s hands snap to his sides. “This must be so easy for you. All you ever got was an end and then coming back, like nothing fucking happened. But I’ll tell you what you missed when I was waiting for you to wake up, when I let you die, when I _buried you_ , when I was the one to throw that first fucking handful of dirt on your coffin and sit by your damn grave for days because I couldn’t go home and sleep in our bed and dream that I would see you in the kitchen or wandering around or walking through the front door alive and well and here when you weren’t. You aren’t.”

His breath wheezes. “I’ll tell you what happened, because you missed everything. And you might remember bits of The Rising, but you weren’t the one who woke up to a dead man breaking down your front door and then spending ten minutes trying to kill the thing with your damn hands before it ripped you to shreads with your half-brother almost pissing himself, never seen him more scared. You’ve never seen a hoard of killers walking towards you… _things_ that look like _people,_ and having to gun them down like it means nothing just so you could rescue a kid that’s already bleeding out, or making enough money to bargain your next meal. You never caught yourself trying to make a joke out of it because if you didn’t then you’d want to kill yourself for what you’ve done; because none of them deserved it, but I did it anyway…

“Not sleeping because you’re worried you’ll die in the night because your stomach won’t stop trying to eat itself. Not having food, or water, or somewhere to sleep without fear of being found when out on missions…”

He laughs, and it is so cold. He laughs in anger and pain. It strains in his throat, catches every single ounce of his worry and every tangled memory. Eren looks into her eyes and she looks back. Every word is calm and paced and so unlike him. “…Trying to fight back the nightmares with pure fucking anger because you had nothing else to believe in. Every damn day believing that if you’d killed enough, you could make a difference, that the deaths would mean something if you clear the world of the pain and the hurt.

“I saw things like you eating people like me, like meat from a pig. Fucking animals just eating for no reason. And then you’d just throw most of it back up and carry on.” Eren sniffs. “Amilie died, you know, when you were gone. A rotter punched his arm through her stomach before smashing her skull into the ground. It tried to tear her eyes out to get at her skull. And Levi had to shoot her in case she couldn’t survive having her stomach torn apart, or if she turned, because we didn’t know that it was just a myth, before the pain killed on its own killed her and… and that wasn’t the only one. So many people, so many… suffered. Worse than that. Longer than that. They burnt a pile of five hundred and sixty nine bodies in Castle Park one evening. All people. No walkers no rotters. Just people that had been killed by being torn apart. Dead, because of things like you and the hope that we could protect ourselves.”

Mikasa watches him lick his dried lips and cough. Anger still resides and she wants to hold him, but she can see the heckles raised along his shoulders, every movement a jolt. His arms swing wildly and slap his legs, a surprise. “And then suddenly the government perks up like a beacon that had just abandoned everything but their own damn problems. They had a _solution_. A _cure.”_ His hand raises to the sky. He silently begs for a release. Every word storms higher and higher to try and tear back against the screaming birdsong- an unheard thundering rage. _“_ But not for the people that we’d lost fighting, no. Just the people that had already been pronounced long dead of their own causes. The _fuckers_ that rolled us over got another chance. The ones that had killed us, eaten us, attacked us even though we’d loved them in their lives…. They got it. Not the people who fought like heroes. Died like heroes. _You_ did. You got the chance, and then you come back and _think_ for one FUCKING MINUTE that everything will go back to the way it was. And the worst part is that I thought that too. I thought that you would be normal, human.

“Well do you know what? It ain’t like that. I don’t forget anything. I remember, I can’t sleep because I see people dying in front of my eyes, not just now but before now too- but I hate every one, they make me all sick. And then to know that you’ve probably killed people like that and you sleep next to me at night like a fuckin’ log, with the only protection I have being this one shitty piece of crap I put in your body every day… It scares me so much. Our marriage isn’t worth even that much to me. Being this scared that one night I’ll wake up to you, rabid, and dying because I trusted you to pretend to be what you aren’t… it’s not worth it to me. I’m so scared-“

“You shouldn’t be. You should have told me this!”

“But you’ve never told me how many people you’ve killed!” He explodes. “Why?! Why every time I give you the injection you apologise and I _don’t know why_. I have no idea how much of a danger you are to me now and that is _so_ terrifying.” He rubs the tear tickling his cheek. “Tell me, Mikasa. How many people did you kill in your untreated state?”

“Ere-“

“How many?!” He screams. Green eyes brim with fresh tears.

Mikasa swallows her words. Then she sighs. “Nine. I killed nine people. Two men, two women… five children.” Her voice is so quiet that it is barely audible. Eren overthrows it with a cry.

“And do you regret that? Do you deep down, really regret what you did?”

“Of course I do but-“

And that is where she stops herself. Realisation kicks in and she shakes her head.

“But if I hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t have seen you again.”

That is her kicker, and Eren knows it. She cannot regret it because she doesn’t, because it brought her to him. Those lives hang over his head, not hers.

Eren only nods heavily. He is frowning, big green eyes red-rimmed. He rubs his eyes dry one last time.

Then, carefully, he pries the wedding ring from his finger and drops it to the floor, just like he should have done long ago. His irises are clear and wide, sparking sharp shards, the dust of glass… bright. His smile is small and weak, the final goodbye riding in his drawn face, swollen bags and cheeks. His worried lip.

“Then I don’t have a wife. Mikasa would never have killed someone. Not even for me.”

Mikasa is exasperated. She huffs. “I didn’t do it for you, it happened and I’m sorry it did. But that doesn’t mean I’m not grateful that I’m-”

“Mikasa wouldn’t be g _rateful,_ ” he spits. “Mikasa would die in herself if she hurt anyone that didn’t deserve it. She cared, she was clever and strong and she would have done what’s best. She would never forgive herself for hurting someone-“

“I regret it every day, Eren. Why do you think I apologise?! Because I feel like it? No, because I’m sorry to every person that I killed. It happened and I can’t help that. I’m trying to move on and-”

Eren ignores her. “But Mikasa would never hurt me, and I’d never hurt her. She’d never get close if she thought she’d hurt me, scared me. She’s not selfish.” Eren swallows thickly. He knows he has to, and it kills him but he knows he needs to do this, to admit that he should have said goodbye a long time ago. “But I’ve got this rotter in my house and-“

“Don’t. Please!”

“And it wants to be with me even though it could hurt me, even though it scares me. Because it wants to be by my side and doesn’t want to lose me. It keeps things from me, pretends that everything is fine and wants me to be with it even though it can’t love me like Mikasa did. Even though it tries. I…I- I don’t love the walker. I love… I loved, Mikasa. But she died two years ago. So I had that ring on for nothing-“

“Eren please don’t!”

And he smiles at the walker, eyes still to the ground. He smiles because this is his goodbye, the one he never got to say in her death, his admission, the pain of not letting go. “I was married to a woman called Mikasa who was the most beautiful person I’ve ever met. She was perfect, controlling, like a damn mother, a total fucking worrywart and a workaholic… but she was amazing. And now I’m letting her go because I’m not married to her corpse, no matter how alive it seems. I loved her. I still do. But you,” Eren looks to the body standing in front of him, a display of pure despondence. “You aren’t Mikasa.”

Her hands fly to her hair and the walker stumbles towards him, shaking, rasping her words. “But I am. I am Mikasa, it’s me, Eren it’s me.” She wails. “What don’t you see? I’m the same person!”

He shakes his head. “I can’t do it any more. I’m alone here. That kiss… what did you feel…”

The silence is short, yet strong. Her eyes grow and she searches for a burning answer.

“That I love you, in my heart; I know I do, Eren… I love you so much…”

“But did you feel anything?” He presses, “Because I did. And you were cold. I was trying, but you weren’t there. I don’t know what to do any more. Because I kissed the thing I’d promised myself I’d rid the world of. It made me so, so frustrated.” He shakes his head one more time. His hair hangs limp. “I can’t do this without Mikasa. But you aren’t-“

She rushes towards him, grabbing him by the arms. He hangs limply in her grip, eyes wide with fear. “But I am _, I am!_ What don’t you _get_ about that? I’m here and I love you. I’m Mikasa, it’s me this is me! I remember everything, and I know that I love you. I love you more than I love myself and without you I’m nothing.”

Their eyes connect in the early morning light.

His; a wild forest, fresh meadow and swimming in the sad precipice of the end. Hers; the eclipse of a bright moon, trapped emotion in the unfeeling body he has grown to fear, she has grown to understand.

His tears fall free, and for the first time this morning he smiles, and it is so genuine and beautiful it breaks her heart. “Then be nothing.” His whisper cracks. “Because my Mikasa is long dead, and I’ve been living an ungodly lie for far, far too long.”

With that, he slips away from her with some unseen, fated force and turns, opens the door and shuts it behind him. It rattles in the lock.

Mikasa’s wail is piercing. It fills with sorrow as the door slams, chains shaking his goodbye. She is alone. His ring shines golden on the floor, an eternal loop of her forever, lying without an owner. She leans down and picks it up with a dry choke, rolling the thing between her fingers and repeating the same words in her head as though they are everything. The vows- their vows- lie dead on her tongue despite her wanting them to be so alive.

‘Til death do them part. Until the dead pulls them away. Until the deaths they have caused pile between them and they can no longer see each other through misery.

Mikasa folds her legs and sits on the floor, screaming. For the first time, she really wishes she had just died and had never come back.

 

 

 

\--

_I’ve never felt so alone until I saw you. I loved you so much._

\--

 

 

 

Jean has the beige folder under one arm, neurotripteline injection in his hand. The corridor is silent save for his own breathing which is heavy and drawn, but steady.

He is standing outside Marco’s door for another day this week, unable to get himself away from the only duty he feels somewhat content when doing. He wouldn’t show it, but he’s okay with it. That’s strange to him. He should hate it, push against it in every way and yet he cannot. He cannot bring himself to not like the man in that room instead of seeing him as something like the others; a killer, a monster.

Perhaps he is growing soft with the stretching time between her death and this moment, but also not. Something in Marco makes him seem more human than anything else. Maybe the clearness of his display of emotion hits him harder, deeper than any other walker he has seen. The pureness in his reactions is something strange compared to the other PDS sufferer’s, and there is never any anger or distain when it comes to anyone- anyone but himself.

He cannot hate him no matter how much he wants to hate every one of them for what he did to Amilie and took from him. The rotters have to pay for that, but Jean does not see Marco as one of them. Whilst he knows the danger he contains there is nothing but a person just as confused and scared as he is.

Knocking, he opens the door without waiting for an answer and finds Marco sitting in the dark and curled up like a ball on the obscenely thin mattress, staring at nothing in particular.

“Hey,” he nods. “Y’okay mate?”

Marco’s head shoots up, eyebrows raised under slightly greasy hair. His one blank eye is wide, the rounded edges of his pupil neat. Jean wonders if Marco has noticed his own slightly grubby state, if he has taken to caring for his reflection. And then he remembers the time in the testing room and wants to shiver. He poor man cannot face who he is.

“Fine, t’anks. How about you? You’re looking better for sure.” His eye scans Jean for a moment and Jean shrugs at the comment. He has been feeling better. The gash on his side is thankfully almost healed- disgusting and purple but nowhere near as bad as before, not as painful. One stiff hand curls away from the bungle of dark clothes and a pale hand points to the folder. “Brought some readin’ material I see.”

Jean looks down to it too, lifting it away and then slapping it back down to his side with a shrug. “It’s your file. Hanji’s been on my arse for not writing down how the injections go.”

“What a taskmaster.” Marco tuts, vowels short and lithe. Jean admires the difference between his stretched words. “Anyt’ing exciting?”

“I can’t even fucking tell. You ever tried reading Hanji’s handwritin’? Like readin’ fucking Latin.”

Marco laughs loud and hard. It’s not funny, but Jean knows people find any excuse when times are hard to find a reason. God knows that he wishes he had tried that approach instead of wallowing and a plethora of bad habits re-established. He purses his smile and lets Marco unstably unravel himself and get comfortable on the edge of the makeshift bed.

“I heard a woodpigeon outside earlier. What month is it?”

Jean thinks for a moment. “March. The nineteenth.”

“Ah,” Marco gasps. “Four days until two years since… God. I’d be twenty-six in a few months.”

“I’ll bake you a cake,” Jean mutters, earning another bright laugh. “Sounds like some crazy Addam’s Family shit. Happy Deathday an’ all.”

“It really does, doesn’t it?” Marco carries on chuckling. “You’d have t’ eat t’ cake on your own though. ‘m not sure I want t’ be sick on me birthday.”

He wonders how Marco can be so calm, so seemingly fine with his death that they are able to joke about it as though it were just an embarrassing memory. Jean hums contemplatively, slightly disgusted at the ease of their conversation, setting the folder next to Marco and taking the vile from its little box and twisting the thing around until it clicks and sits neatly in the metal and plastic device cradling the liquid inside. “Can you sit on the floor?”

Marco looks up from the file next to him. His blank eye sits under a thin eyebrow of concern, but he nods and moves over the bench and onto the floor, pulling off his hoodie until he’s in just a t-shirt and jeans. Everything bunches up around his torso and Jean immediately notices there are less cuts here, the skin smoother and softer, ripping neatly in the slight darkness. He licks his bottom lip, sitting behind Marco and the head of dark hair begins dipping downwards to expose the dark gap at the back of his neck, hand skimming over the arm riddled with staples and laced like a bodice.

Marco muses silently. Jean lets his hand run across Marco’s lower neck, teasing the shirt down to the little dark hole running dainty blue ribbons of veins along the spine and across the shoulders like fledgling wings. The skin is like silk. Cool but warm under touch, and smooth and soft.

Jean snaps out, clutching the injection tighter and letting it slip into the hole. For some reason, here always seems sensitive, and Marco flinches under the shocked grasp Jean places on his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Fine.” Marco swallows. “Go ahead.”

“You’re not gonna bite?”

“Not if I keep my eyes open.”

Jean nods, although Marco can’t see it. His index finger slowly pushes the blue, thick liquid from the tube and into the catheter.

And Marco does something Jean has never heard him do on another shot.

He moans, loud and hard, short with lack of air, followed by the most rasping gasp he has ever heard. The shoulder under his touch flexes and rolls with every breath, Marco’s body shuddering like he is having convulsions. Jean throws the injection across the room with a clatter, both hands holding the man down and thanking his lucky stars for the way he is sitting behind and not in front.

But it does not stop. The shaking and the moans and cries only carry on. He just… cries. For nothing, for something not there, begging and pleading to the wall in front. Jean wraps his arms around Marco’s neck and bends down to see his eye still open-

Wet with tears. His mouth slings open and down in a silenced scream, choking moans that should not sound as though he is remembering something personal, but still do.

“It’s okay, calm down.” Jean tries to croon but it only sounds forced, the memory of how to tease a person into relaxation playing at the back of his mind, forced unwillingly to the front in an attempt to get them to play over.

What he would have said to Amilie? The memories he wants to forget rush back and before he knows he is choking out the words he can first think of.

“Uh… hey come on, don’t worry just, just hang on. Just breathe… in, out. Er, think of something else.”

“I-“ Marco somehow manages to choke out. It ends in a moan, deep and rasping that exhales like a breath and his jaw quivers. “I’m…”

He jolts in Jean’s restrictive grasp.

“A… pa-“

“Shh, shh it’s okay. I thought Paddies were s’posed to be tougher than this.” Jean’s voice is getting lost but he doesn’t care. His arms ache from holding the bigger, thicker form in his arms.

“Part… tially de- deceased synn… ah…Ahhh-“

The gasp for air is desperate, the choking that follows heavy with something deep and painful. It whines through his closed throat. Not needing the air, but desperately wanting it, not able to get it through the thin throat choking Marco, making him splutter back into reality.

“Syn-nn-“ he shivers, Jean feels it ripple against his chest and he puts his face into the side of Marco’s neck, feeling the cool and no longer strong enough to see the pain.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he repeats to himself. A mantra that means nothing.

“Oh God…oh God.” Marco repeats his own prayer. His shoulders wrack with pain, pulling Jean forward slowly, carefully. Everything begins to slow and Marco sobs louder, voice cracking as he chokes and Jean holds him tight, even though he has no clue why.

“You okay?” Jean asks, and he knows it is stupid, but he tries and sees Marco shake his head earnestly. So he breathes his sympathy. “Alright. Come on, sit up.”

It takes a moment to pull himself away but he does.

“It hurt! Why did it hurt?” Marco hisses his pain, holding his right arm tight and turning to stare in confusion at Jean, a shocked open mouth and raised, thin eyebrows. “It really hurt.”

Jean sees a bright tear roll down Marco’s cheek. He suddenly realises. “You’re not supposed to do that.”

The confusion grows for them both. Jean leans to wipe the tear, to check that it is not just an illusion. Marco’s eye follows his finger downward onto his cheek. He can almost feel the pressure. They stare at the wetness gleaming on Jean’s finger, both in confusion. Jean registers it for the first time.

“You should write that down,” Marco tries in earnest to brighten the situation. "I don't think PDS sufferers are meant to cry."

He keeps thinking ‘this has happened before’ over and over, sees the time Marco sank to the ground and he saw the tear. It seemed so normal that he’d never questioned it but here, now, it’s strange. Jean has just seen the low point and suddenly this high, is lacking oxygen. He’s waiting to faint and fall.

Jean shakes his thoughts from his head and jots the development down as Marco shuffles himself onto his knees and stands with a quickly corrected wobble. They stay silent except for small shuffles that rattle. Marco looms over Jean but does nothing. He snaps the file closed.

It is a short while before Jean talks. “I’m gonna tell Hanji, I don’t know what I can do here.” Jean shrugs and stands, trying to ignore the pitiful look on Marco’s face. Marco stands firm and tall but somehow shrinks against Jean as he slides past him and begins to walk out.

“Don’t, please don’t le-“ The words are pale. Jean recognises the pain. “Don’t leave me, Jean, please.”

“I’m not the one you need so-“

“No! No please I can’t…” But as Marco talks his eye is not on Jean. It is looking at the right hand cradled to his chest and he sobs. Jean watches the tremble in his lip. “What’s happening to me?”

He is not strong. His left hand clenches at the broken skin of his right and seems to almost be in pain as the tremble turns to clenched teeth to try and keep the burning air in his lungs.

But Jean doesn’t know what to do. He knows what he should do; find Hanji, tell them what has happened and get help. That is what he needs to do, but he cannot. Marco is scared, and he is alone in figuring out what is happening. Despite his height, the larger, thicker body, compared to Jean he is so small. Jean could imagine him collapsing in on himself at any moment to just disappear and forget. He can’t let that happen either, he cannot see another person disappear before his eyes.

Jean wraps his arms underneath Marco’s and shushes the walker, who lifts up his arms and throws them both around Jean’s neck. Marco cries into the crook of pale skin. Dark hair brushes up against Jean’s cheek and it does not feel cold, dead. It is filled with warmth he pushes into, buries the side of his face in as his arms pull Marco’s solidity against him. It is not disgusting, not cold and horrible but soft, still apart from the uneven breathing mismatched against his own fastened pace. The hand over his left shoulder lies still whilst the other one grips hard into Jean’s shirt. He lets Marco, holds him for a long moment in the blurred light and feels comfort he had not experienced in a long time. He doesn’t feel like he is going to fall.

“Help me,” Marco whispers against his skin. Jean rests his cheek against Marco’s bent head and nods lightly; his silent confirmation that he will, that he is too stubborn to see someone else in pain.

“I will, ‘kay?” He rubs his hand along a muscle-ridged spine. “I’ll help, we’ll figure out what’s going on.”

Marco’s breathing slows. They are silent for a long time. Never switching positions, strangely comfortable in their quick collision, they stand and think… Or not think. One man lets his mind go blank, the other’s is whirring and he wants to say something. And so he swallows thickly before coughing and sighs.

“I don’t want to die.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHO MAKES PROMISES THEY CANNOT KEEP?
> 
> Me, that's who.


	9. "Do not be amazed by this; the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out- those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Listen- [(PVRIS- Demon Limbs)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtJj_XrIYkE)
> 
>  
> 
> _Oh, I know, I can feel the shifting in my bones,_  
>  _Enclosed are senses so unknown_  
>  _I've been changing, falling, fading_  
>  _There're demons at the door patiently waiting._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #spooptastic

There is something about handling a gun after another stressful phone call...

Another conversation about something he’d rather forget hangs in the back of his mind like an oil slick, tainting everything he thinks of with a horrible darkness that coats him and clings with dripping tendrils.

And so now there is no longer a target. Instead Erwin lies six hundred meters from a pile of splinters littering the floor, body flat to the cold, dry and dusty ground, L115A3 resting next to his head and painted with pale camouflage.

If he wanted he could have done further, spread the earth before him and strained for the sight of the inanimate kill, but there is something about the silence of standing so close to the target that excites him. He can watch the way the thin ply bends and snaps beneath the weight of the heavy bullet, see the cracks ripple through the monochrome targets to join the pinprick holes like bolts of sandy lightening. The sound of the small world around him ripping and snapping draws the flat, female voice’s words from his head, the repetition of his actions burying the weight of the phone conversation deeply.

Erwin loves to hit them in perfect circles that display the accuracy he has trained into himself, to a tee, to reach macabre perfection. The training is filled with homely repetition, and he falls into comfortable companionship with it.

Yet he knows these are not enough. Flesh- that’s what these bullets have to tear, it’s permitted. Wasting one after another in cold and clotted blood that he understands sits unwittingly beneath his feet, the target he has to hit but cannot bring himself to. He knows that if he could, he would. And normally he would never hesitate to do it. Death has never bothered him before. But this is different in his eyes. People should know, and it is knowledge that stops him from putting a bullet in the thing’s skulls whilst it lies in an induced sleep in the early hours of a mid-March morning.

His finger twitches against the trigger, and suddenly the fractured pike in the ground is moving, walking languorously and snarling between blackened lips and a scowling eye. Erwin lines his gaze up with the crosshair and pulls, thinking hard on how the walker would drop as the bullet loses itself in rotting flesh and brittle bone.

He smiles as though it is only him, but he can still feel Levi’s weighty eyes burrowing into the back of his skull through the misted air; watching his every move, calculating the strangeness in Erwin’s unusually vicious new sport as though watching him shift his legs and arms could dig the secrets from the ground with faint and useless scratches. The gaze is cold-- what else does Erwin expect-- but there is something unbelievably calm compared to the usual storm hidden behind sickly skin and a concentrated frame. The constant whirring of a troubled mind has frozen, gears locking and straining to push through some constipating thought. Layers and layers of practice lie on top of one another- a blank exterior they have all managed to perfect to try and hide the feline stillness.

He finishes the feed on one last standing lump of wood stuck in the ground, and disposes of the cartridge by his side, groaning at the weight of the gun as he lifts it to the side and rolls himself over to look at Levi with a thick raised eyebrow and a smirk.

“Enjoyin’ the view?” He nervously chuckles to himself. Levi kicks away from the wall of the bunker he had leant on the stride slowly over. He rolls his eyes and clicks his tongue in insult.

“Piss off.”

“Levi,” Erwin purrs. He knows how much it annoys his inferior when he does that. “You know we don’t need that sort of language.”

“Sorry,” the shorter man stops a few meters short, folding his arms in front of his chest and glaring with a tight smile. “Piss off, Commander.” He raises an eyebrow in confrontation.

Erwin ignores him and the all too common, casual insult to his title, stuffing another cartridge in and pulling back the safety latch, bullet travelling to sit wonderfully in the barrel.

Levi lets him pull off another five shots into seemingly thin air. They waste into nothingness despite their sublime accuracy and he tuts at every one the ‘commander’ throws. His arrogance kills- not just the ones he needs to take out, but also Levi’s willingness to stay alive and stick around.

“Havin’ fun wastin’ our ammo?” he flatly asks between the discarding of one cartridge and the insertion of the next. Erwin ignores him heavily, Levi continuing to talk, condescending. “Y’know, it took us months to restock our eight-point-five-nines so that every person allowed one could have a pack. An’ now you’ve destroyed an expensive target. Not takin’ care of our finances much, are you, Commander?”

The undeniably calm tone Levi manages to satirically adopt grates against the insides of Erwin’s skull like sandpaper, an unpleasant squeal of previously unknown understanding that annoys him to the point where chills run down his back, breaking through the gunk of his un-routinely phone call like bleach to grease. He keeps his head down against the cool of the scope and stares at the chunks of wood. But he cannot let himself sit there, and so reluctantly he looks to the impassively triumphant stare hidden beneath a distinctly-against-regulations, overgrown undercut with the short stubble closely shaved and the rest long and hiding Levi’s drawn features; thin and blue lips, emotionless eyes sparking.

“What do you want?” He asks.

Levi blurts out air with a rasp, crude laugh. It is so rare, and yet the meaning is never one of slapstick origins, but realisation. It scares Erwin. “An answer,” he nods. “I need you to tell me why the fuck they’re here, really. Not some Hanji experiment bullshit.”

Erwin sighs. "This isn’t appropriate-“

But before he can say another word, Levi grabs Erwin by the back of his collar, flipping over the larger man as though he weighed nothing and stands over him, leg on either side of the thick body beneath him.

Levi begins landing punch after heavy punch, one after the other in whip-quick succession, bone cracks between his fingers, rolling fluid hits one after another as Erwin does nothing but try to breathe through the blood and pain, face exploding with wet heat and a swollen throb that makes his head spin and his vision blur. The pale face above him crinkles in anger, eyes darkening and freezing with anger. “Do you really think I’m an idiot? Do you think that I won’t notice, you piece of shit?” Levi rasps, punching Erwin square in the face, nose crumpling. “Do you think I don’t realise? Huh? Am I just an annoyin’ piece of shit on your shoe? No I fuckin’ ain’t, arsehole.”

Another punch. Erwin begins groaning out the pain.

“I’m not stupid. I see these things. I know this is your fuckin’ game, old man.” Punch. Thwack.  Levi withdraws his hand, shaking out the blood on his knuckles, cracking the fingers one by one. “I know there’s somethin’ more to this and I’m gonna find out before you hurt anyone else.”

Levi lets go.

Erwin crumples to the floor in a heap, spitting blood from his mouth and trying to breathe through the acrid bubbling in his throat. Then without warning Levi lands a foot on his windpipe and starts grinding it down, the burn that lights up Erwin’s chest heavy with a lack of air. Everything burns. His throat clenches beneath the pressure as though trying to grab any air it can. Erwin’s nostrils flare.

Levi leans over to stare into the bloodshot blue eyes that stare impassively into his own. His own eyes leak over Erwin, thin gaze spilling hot liquid that spatters cold against his skin.

Erwin forgets how to breathe. 

“Do you even,” Levi begins, breath rough, foot waxing to the sound of a strangled moan, “do you even understand how much this life has killed me? I think about the people I’ve killed every day, the people I’ve let die… and I can’t do that anymore. So if you’re using the people with Hanji to your own twisted,” he turns his ankle, “disgustin’ means… then count me the fuck out. Count them out. Count every one of those people out.  ‘Cause I’m getting’ them outta there, and I’m gonna find out whatever sick shit you’re thinkin’ and tear it from your fuckin’ head with my fuckin’ nails. I’m gonna have you screamin’ so hard you won’t be able to find time to breathe. You’re gonna run your cunt-lined throat raw. And then d’you know what?”

Levi laughs. He laughs over Erwin, slowly lowing himself so that his face is above the broken mess, foot removed. He takes the broken face into his hand, gripping it tightly. Fingers snake around Levi's leg whilst others wrapping around the grip of the gun. Levi takes no notice; his voice is calm, steady and raw with anger.

"I tell you what, okay? I'm calling this off and I'm letting them go. I'm letting them go, and I'm apologising for you, for the experiments and the abuse." The corner of Levi's mouth twitches, and he becomes deathly quiet. He whispers. "You are such a bastard. Thinking you can get away with touchin' them like that. What for, Smith? Why would you do that? Sick in the head or somethin'? Get off on that?-"

"No," Erwin cuts, voice bubbling. "Now get off."

"Nah, mate, I'm gonna sit here and hit you 'til you answer." Levi tilts his head to the side, face flecked with crusting blood, monochrome eyes shining. "Remember that kid we caught last year, the one whose skull you cracked? I'd almost forgotten that you said you liked it when they were so cornered, so helpless that they couldn’t do anythin’ but tell the truth. Sounds sick when I say it like this, right?"

Another punch to the jaw, and Erwin feels the dull ache of its dislocation. "I hated that. But seein' it on you's nice. Suits you, Smith. Like hell. You'd make a great rotter, real fuckin' ugly."

Another crack leaves Erwin groaning in pain. "Stop." This time Levi slaps him hard. It tingles numb.

"Tell me and I will. You know how torture works, we’ve seen it enough." Levi lifts Erwin’s head and smacks it hard against the ground, skull and hard dirt thumping emptily. “You know what I’m talking about. I heard you on the phone, talking about getting rid, about taking someone out to dry for this unknown fucker. Now tell me what the fuck is really going on.”

Levi holds the heavy weight of bleeding flesh in his hands, Erwin trying his hardest to bring the words he wants to say to the surface, lips trembling. He can see the man on top of him watching with an impatient crease in his forehead.

He coughs blood, licking the metal taste from his lips. "I'm still holdin’ the gun," he groans.

Erwin clicks his finger against the metal to reiterate his words. But Levi does not pull back, only cracks his thumb in irritation and huffs. "Tell me Smith," he bites.

But the commander only chuckles lightly through the taste of blood. "Sorry."

"Tell. Me." Erwin shakes his head. "Smith..." Levi breathes.

And Erwin begins to laugh, watching Levi breathe out his anger. He sits up against his own weight and the rumble of blood in his head. "Not mine to tell.”

Grey eyes land on him, so sad. They hold the years behind heavy lids. Now they hold something new. Once upon a time they had hung over him, filling with empathy and pain. But the plead sits, and Erwin only notices it; new pain, new anger. "Please," he spits, cries, "I _heard_ you say something. I just want to know why."

"You're not normally one t-"

"Don't do this. Don't make my respect for you fall more than it already has."

The words hit Erwin like bullets. If there is one person he has always believes has full confidence in him, it’s Levi. And yet it’s not just this. Something has already dropped him, and now Erwin is slipping further and further away without even trying.  "Why?" he questions, painful and sad.

Sitting up, Erwin scrunches his eyes. Levi looks away and scoffs once more. "Who'd respect someone that asks his men to abuse anyone like that? And not just now, but before too. I don’t even know why I went along with it." And Levi begins to slide back, lifting his weight from Erwin and sitting on the floor beside him, disgusting dirt and grass everywhere the short man wouldn't want it. "Why that, Erwin? Why are you using them? Why did you feel the need to debase them more than they already are? That’s not healthy. What were you looking for?"

Erwin thinks, carefully wiping around the nose he can feel is broken. "I had to see if they can breed," he sighs only half lying. "We had to know if reanimation is something that can be passed on."

"We?" Levi questions. Erwin skits backwards. “Is that the _we_ you were talking to on the phone in your office the other week?

"So you did hear that.” Levi nods, and Erwin sighs, looking back to the gun. “I've said too much." 

"You've said too little."

Erwin huffs. Levi sits quietly for a few moments, thinking it through quickly, face downcast.

"You _can't_ say, can you?" And the commander nods shallowly, emptying the cartridge into his hand slinging the gun over his shoulder. “They’ve got your tongue. What did you get into Smith?"

"Something big, although I think you already know that." He stands, looking down to Levi- pale skin smattered in blood, uniform soaked- and salutes. "And if it makes you feel any better, I regret it. But that doesn’t mean I can tell you-- not until it’s too late. That doesn’t mean that you and Hanji can’t figure it out on your own... maybe not all of it, but some. But I can't help you more than I already unwittingly have. I'm on the other side now. 'M sorry."

So Erwin begins to walk away, even as Levi shouts out "Captain!" from across the field he just sighs and carries on, wishing whole-heartedly that he had never said yes.

He wants to take them out one by one. But only because they will die anyway, their fate decided by his hand, the idea he thought would be just now painfully blurred, incoherent.

 

 

__

_I can understand why you don't call me Captain now._

___

 

Levi opens the door to Hanji’s office just as they almost fall backwards from swinging on the wooden chair’s hind legs. They whoop at their mistake and correct themselves with a hand clinging hotly to the desktop. “Didn’t see you there!” They smile in some strange semblance of embarrassment and begin to rearrange a few items on their cluttered desk as though it were important to do so. “Then again I don’t know why you’re down here in the first place.” Hanji adjusts their glasses. “Feeling lonely?”

He doesn’t answer, instead taking up residence against the far wall behind Hanji and reaching deep into the pocket of his uniform. His red hat is askew on his head, sleeves rolled up in haste. Levi knows that they notice these things and are already drinking it in.

“What did you do?” They chastise him like a child and yet he allows it. The small oblong chunk in his hand is weighty and he feels the urge to flick it around, but with no point to prove.

Huffing he takes it out and flicks the sharp blade before his chest in a swift figure of eight. It catches back into the lock and then swings backward. It is satisfying. “Nothing,” he grumbles.

They can see the lie; flicking a dead fly onto the floor they pout their displeasure. “Your knuckles tell a different story, I hope you realise that.” He hates their powers of observation. If he could he would have cleaned up but for some reason he had become more and more used to the dirt he had once been diligent in ridding on himself. Now, with a flick of the butterfly knife, his catches the trails of fresh blood cracked out of grazes along his protruding knuckles. He does not hate it. He almost feels at home within the mud under his fingernails and the grit dug into his palms, liking the rough burn of fabric against his skin when he fruitlessly tries to clean it off. He didn’t realise that he had become so complacent. “Did you even clean those up?”

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.

Hanji nods their head downward. In moments they fuss around him, babying him, and yet he does not care. The callouses of his hands barely register any contact between them, the early spring drizzle, biting northern winds, have seen to it that his lips are blued and his joints stiff and unwilling to move away. Levi lets them rub their hands raw with nappy wipes and dab a thick white antiseptic onto the four gashes on each hand. With one appendage still being mothered he grasps the butterfly knife and swings it dangerously close to the long shaggy mess of hair, a few greys peering out from their hiding spots in the knotted mess. Hanji does not flinch, instead sighing and smiling lightly.

“You would have killed me if I did this when we first met.”

“I’m seriously considering it.” His eyes trail to the window. Outside a red Fiesta rattles past. “I really don’t like you touchin' me.”

A sigh. Hanji trundles away and comes back with a mint green and white cardboard box, the size of their palm. With one finger they slip it open, the other pulling out a line of sterilised plasters and ripping the first one open with their teeth. The box is forcefully shoved in their pocket and the thin paper is torn apart. The fabric orange peeks though. They think. They heard his words and think of what to say next. As they pick apart the protective strip and drop the pieces to the floor they try and think of which words would be the most appropriate.

Hanji has learnt over the years.  They understand the mask every one of them wears from one day to the next, the one they have all learnt to sport when trying to hide what they are feeling to try and protect everyone else.

“If you hated it that much,” they sigh, “you really would have killed me by now.” They rip another plaster free and carefully cross it over the knuckle of the index finger of his right hand.

“Maybe it’s not this. Maybe it’s you.”

“I know it’s not me. Do you want to know why?” Levi refuses to look as Hanji as they push their glasses up their nose and hum around their stretched lips. “I know because you don’t come to me unless something is very wrong. Levi,” their hand touches the side of his face and his gaze turns to them, “it’s not just you that thinks something’s up here. I’m guessing you’re angry at me—“

“Very.” Levi slaps the fingers at his face away, face darkening. “I’m more than angry. I’m fuckin’ pissed. B’cause you went along with it and you of all people should know that it should never some down to that.”

They sigh. “You’re right. I should have said no.” Hanij starts on Levi’s left hand, concentrating hard as they wrap up the cuts. “But it’s hard. We lost our world because of them and I just felt as though I needed to know everything. Erwin kept asking and I just kept doing it, even though I knew it was insensitive.” From their pocket Hanji removes a bandage roll. “When he asked if we could check I did doubt. It seemed unlike him—to even mention it and to… to push for it like he did.”

A thin eyebrow rises. Levi looks to Hanji just in time to watch them breathe deeply, remembering. “He made you.”

“He didn’t, I okay’d it.” They begin to wrap his hand. It catches a cut and Levi winces. “Sorry… But I could have falsified results. Not done it at all. It’s awful of me to have put Jean and Eren and Moblit in that situation, and the sufferers. It’s bad of me to carry on when I know that there’s more than one person that could be triggered by finding out.” Hanji stares unblinking into Levi’s eyes. “I take responsibility. I’m sorry Levi.”

He nods and pulls himself away, looking around the room and finally settling on the desk chair. He makes his way over to it. “I know you are,” he sighs. The seat is rather firm. He leans into it and the whole back falls, letting his short legs ride up to the desk. His arms cross across his chest and he stares at the door. “That’s why I want you to help me.”

Hanji frowns, making their way to sit on the chair on the other side of the desk. “What with?”

Levi looks over their shoulder to the door. “Let them go.  I don’t care what you have to do, just get the ones that are left out and somewhere safe.”

The sound of the chair squealing out from underneath Hanji makes Levi snap forward, sitting up. “I can’t!” They squeal. Their eyes are wide and bright. “You don’t know what’s happening down there. It’s amazing. I regret it, sure, you don’t understand that the results I’m getting are better than I could have ever expected. There’s a walker with a heartbeat."

His heart stops.

“Which one?”

“The one with one eye. He—“

“Get him out.” He jumps from the chair. “He needs to _go_.” Levi can feel his bottom lip quaking, panic rising through his chest in a way he hasn’t felt for a long time. The room, the blood and the pain; it flashes back to him so quickly that his eyes cannot adjust. The thought of being singled out. He licks his lip before taking a shaking breath, turning to the window and slamming his aching fist onto the glass. “Fuck!”

“What?”

“It’s him. That’s the one Erwin was talking about. This isn’t just a game this is real, this is—Mother fucker--“

Hanji grabs Levi by the shoulders and shakes him hard. “Tell me what’s going on, Levi. I can’t do shit until you tell me.”

Levi swallows the bile in his mouth. Shrugging himself out of the hands holding him tightly, he breathed hard and ragged and turns his head just enough for him to see the outside from the corner of his eye. It feels settling, and the patterns the wind runs through the single tree in the courtyard below gives him a pattern to inhale, to exhale; to forget, to bury.

“The other night… I was here late and—“ He shuts his eyes. “I was pissed. At Erwin. I’d found out and I couldn’t _believe_ that he could do that after… what had happened. So I went to his office and he was talkin’. On the phone.”

The scene flashes before his eyes.

The door to the office, the flickering lights and the nameplate partially scratched off of the door. The crack under the frame where he could see the flashing green light. The biting of his lips, the scratches on his arms. The faint feeling of grease after he had run his hands through his hair, underneath the nails bitten down beyond the point where the pain was excruciating.

Late at night and too far into the memories to forgive what he had done, and then to hear those words escape through the cracks and be reminded so… so _vividly_  of a time he had promised himself he would rather forget. The words are gone but he knows what they meant.

“I don’t know who it was. But Erwin seemed… how he is now. Distant.” Levi shakes his head. Hanji guides him back into the chair and he sighs as he sits, putting his head in his hands, bent over as though he is trying not to faint. “He was saying… talking about the data and I think he’s been taking it. To send to the person.”

Hanji pulled off their glasses. “He’s stealing my data?”

“He mentioned it. I heard the phone ring and at first he seemed like… like he didn’t know shit, but then he was laughing and just picking this person apart—“

“Did he mention a name?”

Levi nods. “Annie… L-something.”

Their eyes grow wide. Glasses gone they seem to have grown tenfold and then some. Their mouth hangs open. “Leonhardt.” Hanji swallows. Levi nods. “I thought she was dead.” They push the chair Levi sits in to the side, crouching in front of the desk and immediately going to turn on their laptop. It flashes up within moments, a black screen backed by a bright blue, and they type into it with immense speed. “Her father worked on a project, years ago, to develop a drug that slowed a person’s bodily functions. It was supposed to be used in the field when someone was dying and they needed more time to treat them. It failed, killed every one of the people they tested it on. Of course it was on the down-low.”

With a final click to a button, a picture flashes up on the screen. It is of a young woman, blue eyes deep, her gaze infinite. Her sharp jaw is tensed, face high and proud. “There were about fifteen people working on the drug. When it began to fail the government took measures to make sure no one knew about it. They wasted a lot of money on its development. So they got rid of them, and anyone who they thought would know about it. That included Annie. But they didn’t get everyone.” They click a few more times. Two men, one blond, obviously built, grins out to them. The other face is blank, his green eyes somewhat glassy. “These two were sons of men in the programme. One of them, Reiner Braun, was working with his father just before the whole project went down. He disappeared along with Bertholdt Fubar, son of the head scientist on the project. The government have been searching for them but have found nothing. They disappeared from the papers. Either they managed to switch identity or they’ve somehow been taken down.”

“He mentioned government.” Levi sits forward in the seat. “He said somethin’ like, uh… somethin’ about telling ‘em that they was involved. I didn’t hear that so well, was kind of pissed off at that point.” His eyes suddenly lit up. “He mentioned bringing them back.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know but I definitely remember him sayin’ ‘You want him back ‘cause you’re worried that it’s working.’ I definitely heard that.” He sits forward in the chair. His hands clasp together on his lap.

“That’s impossible.” Hanji springs up, flinging their hands across the desk in desperation. Dragging a large mound of files towards their chest, Levi scans down to see what they were. Patient files in light brown binders all written with a number. Hanji’s hands scrabble through the mess until one is thrown before him. “It makes sense though. Read the last page. Kirschtein noticed it.”

He opens it up.

_Date: 12/03/2011. Time: c. 1100_

_Marco seemed fine before the injection and talked as he normally does. But when I gave him the nurotriptelin injection he was shaking. I noticed that he started to cry and he had tears. He also said he felt pain and held his arm for some time after I gave him the injection. He became very upset and said several times that he “did not want to die.”_

_During the injection he started shaking and was more vocal than normal. The affect also lasted longer perhaps three minutes. He attempted to speak in that time. I had to physically restrain him although he made no move to hurt me in any way. After he seemed scared and confused. I think that he has not felt that in injection before._

“You’re kidding me.” Levi didn’t look up from the page. “This… this is real?”

“I know he’s about as eloquent as a five year old but he’s not a liar. But all my evidence backs this up.” Hanji turns back to the laptop, dragging up another few files. The first few had lines scraping across white, completely flat. The last seemed to waver. “The three at the start are all regular PDS sufferers. Their heart rate and brain activity is almost completely stunted. Even during a neurotripteline injection, their brain function shoots up and returns back to base level within the time of their flashback phase. From studying the two ex-ULA members after taking blue oblivion, we noticed that the difference between the treated and untreated is perhaps a difference of two percent at best. But Marco,” they drag up the last set of charts, “he has a heat beat. It’s incredibly faint and very irregular, but it’s there. The same thing happens with his brain function, along the same timelines. But that’s not the interesting part.”

Levi stays quiet, slowly drinking the information.

A chart pops up on the screen. There are twenty-two bars stretching across, most at the same level, two at the end a blood red instead of a navy blue. One spikes. “Guess which one is Marco.”

“What is this?”

“This is the levels of neurotripteline found in the blood. We took a sample on their first day.” Their finger and Levi’s eyes scan the line. “The average is about zero point one four percent. Patient seven has a level of zero point nine. Even before we got here, his average was double the others.”

“He could have had a double shot.”

“No, you don’t understand. Their blood doesn’t flow. The injection is put into the back of the neck because it stimulates nerves in the spinal cord, which in turn stimulates the brain and the gial cells within it. PDS sufferers cannot grow their own gial cells. Without them, the body ceases to function properly. Without them the body stops working and the person is likely to die. The neurotripteline found in the blood is found there as a result of diffusion. Even the average dose would not be able to give that amount. Not even a few could bring the total anywhere near since the body uses it up to stay in their treated state. It’s the amount that has built up over time.” Hanji rubs their forehead. “The dose he must have been given is stupidly strong. Whatever he was injected with is not a normal dose and it was done early enough that it has stayed at a level and only been topped up. Not even the new ones we’re testing out have anything close to the percentage. This is almost completely pure, nothing obtainable from anywhere I know of. Marco could go for weeks without an injection and still be fine. The addition of more is only making it stronger.”

“So you think they put something in him.”

“I’m almost certain now that you’ve mentioned Annie. I don’t know what it was, but it was strong enough.” Hanji sighs, putting the glasses back on their face. “He’s precious, and from what you told me he’s also in danger. You’re right, we need to get him out. He could be the key to everything.” Hanji’s face purses in worry.

Levi takes a deep breath and settles back into the chair. His legs stretch under the desk. “So where do we put him? I’m not just sending him off to any community officer.”

“Eren could have him,” Hanji suggests after a moment, “He knows how to deal with PDS, Mikasa would be with him and he would be in easy access whilst still being out of the way.”

He thinks for a long moment. “Fine. I’ll talk to Eren. You see if anyone will take the other patients. I don’t care if I have to pay or ‘em to be taken, just make sure they’re gone.” Levi stands, circling his neck to a chorus of clicks. “Thanks.”

Levi steps towards the door, opening it slowly. He can feel Hanji smiling, hear the breath before they talk. “You’re a kind man, Levi.” He stops. “I know that being what you’ve been through, seeing the same things play out in front of you is really fucking hard. But I’m glad you’re using it in the right way.”

Hanji smiles weakly when Levi huffs and pushes the door open more forcefully than it needed to be. Behind him it swings shut and they watch it until it clicks into the wall. Their eyes drift back to the screen and are greeted by ones cold and hardened and an endless, feral blue.

 

 

 

\--

_Hands tied head down shoulders down back stiff eyes wet ground blood hands laughter punch pain pain pain… Forget…. pain… Forget… drag kick hit ground eyes laughter punch kick heat cold hands choke crack blood pain…. Forget… wake up cry cold laugh talk scream laugh cry plead hit dark pain…. Forgot… phonecall cry plead hope laugh pain… Forget… wake cold scream watch plead pain…. Wake pain… forget… wake naked bloody crying pain… forgotten… forget._

\--

 

 

 

Eren stands in white. As far as his eye can see the land around him is as pure and clean and perfect as heaven, as silent as a sleeping mind and as ethereal as the light that shines from everywhere. His mind cannot fathom if he is standing in infinity, or if the walls are in front of his face. At once he feels free and trapped.

He stretches one hand to find a wall, but feels nothing under his golden skin. It seems almost black against the purity surrounding him. His fingers curl into his palm.

It takes three steps for him to feel a cool surface underneath his fingertips. It is faint but it is there. There is a pressure he is not sure he understands. He pushes himself into the wall, using all of his weight, and it cracks beneath him, spider’s webs cracking little dark lines across the pure white, matching his skin. He pulls himself back and gasps, his eyes focused as the cracking grows and grows with every step he takes away from it, and he can move no longer. The breaking wall groans and snaps under its own weight. Eren draws his hands up to his chest, protecting them. His head ducks down.

The creaking stops.

Eren sighs loudly and gulps, thankful that the noise has come to an end. His breaths rattle but he concentrates on them, each one just that little slower, that little calmer. The silence clears his mind, lets him finally find who he is.

There he stands, back against a wall, living and breathing, human and centred. He lets his chest fall outwards, and chuckles. His eyes stretch up to the cracks in front of his eyes. He muses over how they stem from where his hand was placed, how the cracks seem to glow with his skin. The amusement in his chest grows and suddenly he forces a bounding noise ripple across the room. Every pulse of movement rips his chest, his hands moving to clutch at how stiff his lungs feel but he does not care. This room is his. This is his space and it works for him.

And he wants it changed.

Who decides but him what the room looks like? Who thought that white would be what he wanted?

The spurt of anger that rides him halts the laughter. His hands draw to his sides, fisted. The cold air tears through to his lungs. A foot slides back along the floor and he flattens himself and runs.

The few steps to the wall pass in moments. A fist collides with the wall. It flexes underneath the pressure, small crick pulsing. Eren breathes out the sigh, rage gone as quickly as it rose. It seems to drain from every pore. He slumps—the glass does the same.

In the wall it jolts then breathes one last time before collapsing, rolling itself across its own surface until it sees the floor in its sights. The body is in the way but it does not care. It tears through his flesh in haste to come to a standstill; blood flying, small grunts steeling against the movement and the ancient pain. He feels little, and yet the emotion at the back of his head turns and twists, ready to dart out and blind him in any instant. For the moment, though, he lets his own damage shred him.

“Eren.” A distant voice calls to him. He takes no notice.

He stares, instead, in the room twisting to suit him. The wall in front is no longer white, the glass at his feet bloodied and shining. He faces a dark mirror racing from the floor to high above his head, the top just a spec, and sees himself.

The head titled backward and just to the left looks arrogant, the length of his torn neck bleeding and a brilliant mixture of shining light brown and blistering red. It stains nothing, his chest bare. The blood runs down, across. It twists between his arms, sends cooling bolts dripping to his waist, holding his hips and finally drying as they reach his thighs.  The drips sliding down to his collarbones tug his arms. It dries but carries on, handprints and fingerprints no one put there. Where it crusts it dirties and darkens but does not stop until collects in the palms of his face-up hands. Here it sits, moves up skywards fingers in dribbles before hiding underneath his nails. It drips between his hands.

“Eren,” the voice calls again and his head snaps up ahead of him. Before his eyes is his reflection. His mouth is agape. “Eren,” the reflection says again, the corner of its lip twisting upward, eyes shining. The body is clean and untouched.

Eren goes to open his mouth but his lips are tied. He growls in his throat. The reflection laughs at him.

“How pathetic.” The smirking reflection shakes its head. “Look at you.”

Eren blinks for an instant and suddenly the clean version of himself has gone.

The voice remains, emanating from everywhere. “Look at what you’ve become. Look at what they’ve done to you.” And it’s right. Before him is a pale man, a shadow. Naked and unmoving, it hunches before his eyes, lips pulled back over its lips in a snarl, hair matted, body smattered with blood and dirt he can only see comes from a round wound to the neck, sprayed over the side of his face and along his arms, across the floor beneath him. He sucks metallic air through his nose, suddenly realising he can taste it on his tongue, smell human flesh in his nostrils.

And then he stares back at himself. He watches his own eyes as they move across his features.

Pure and wide, they go on for an infinity he cannot describe. They widen, shrink as he moves away from himself. His blood-dried lips crack open, bleed anew, thick and black, and he roars at his own reflection.

“Look at you. Where has your humanity gone?” He turns to the voice. Before him stands a man, green eyes, skin a few shades brighter than his, cleaner and more alive than his own. Under taught eyebrows his eyes sparkle, jaw tensing. He rolls his neck. “What about _you_ is human?”

He rushes across the white floor, bare feet being cut; his arms outstretched as he screams hoarsely.

The man dodges effortlessly to the side. “When did we promise ourselves to them?” He spins as he talks. One hand reaches behind him, grabbing a pistol. “When did we start to sympathise?”

The room shatters with a blast of the gun. He sees the room vibrating around him and cowers low. His eyes stay open but watch the walls as they, too, crack.

Without warning his wrist is dragged away from him. The man stands directly behind him, warm and smelling of life. He looks over his shoulders to see the pair of eyes he recognises from a past life. They lean over him slightly, level. “Don’t you remember a time where you  said you’d hate them all?”

He swallows.

“Eren,” the voice sighs into his ear, “don’t let them win; don’t let the dead live and the living die.”  A hand snakes around his throat, stopping the blood. “Who said those words, Eren? Who was the one that told your corps those _exact_ words?”

“I did.”

Eren feels a warm breath on his neck. “We did, didn’t we.” The hand leaves his neck. A few tapping steps are taken away from him. They muffle into nothing. “And tell me,” the familiar voice resonates around him, “what are you doing?”

He swallows thickly.

“I’m dying.”

“And why are you dying.” He can hear the smile in the voice.

“I’m dying because I trust them.”

He raises his eyes to the mirror in front of him. Leaning against the glass is the clean him. He stares at his own sullied hands before looking at the man in front of him, the version of himself he wants desperately.

“Tell me,” his doppelganger crosses his arms and rests his head on the glass behind him, chin raised, “will _I_ die?”

“No.”

“Why won’t I die?”

The version of himself steps forward. The mirror behind is filled with his own reflection. Pale eyes glare back, muscles rippling with hunger. It is horrible, demonic. It scares him.  But this is him, this is all of them. This is what he becomes when he trusts something so dangerous. This is who he is; now that he separates her from the rest and wishes that it did not matter he becomes one of them, he joins the ranks of people who feel that the deaths of people like him were worth something. He has become what he most hates—complacent.

He shuts his eyes, and when he opens them again he sees the walker in front of him.

“Why won’t I die?” Eren asks the walker again.

Its eyes, once bright green, have shattered like glass, filled with black tears. Its naked from crumbles to the floor just as the glass from the remaining walls splinters and finally give way, white to black. Each one shines, takes the scene from a different angle. Eren stands over the walker, the dead thing that just needs a reminder, and remembers the weight of the gun in his hand. He takes it up, looks at it for a moment. Then he cocks it.

“Why won’t I _die_?” The rotter whispers.

“Why won’t I die.” Eren repeats. He points the gun to the rotter. His voice rises. “Answer me.”

It swallows. They are silent for a long time. Each wall plays a different angle; behind, to the left, to the right. The floor glows in black blood. The walker takes its time to think and, eventually, nods its head and looks up. Its mouth snarls, teeth coated in the same black gore that runs from its nose, streams down from its eyes. The hole on the side of its neck drips.

“You won’t die because you hate them, you distrust them.” It looks him dead in the eye. “I won’t die because they won’t.”

“But you will.” Eren releases the catch, the walker making no move. It slumps, head bowed. It gives way to Eren, the part of him that trusts ready to give its life to live, to carry on. Eren breathes. “You’re going to die, because they’re already gone. We just have to make sure they stay down.”

The walker snarls. “Do it.” It grips its own hands tight. “Do it! Make me gone.”

The breath leaves Eren, sharp. His eyes trail up the figure—and for a moment he feels sympathy.

“Your trust leaves with me.” The walker’s eyes are on him. “When I’m gone—“

“I know.” Eren shakes his head. He exhales.

And he shoots.

 

 

 

\--

_I’ll kill them all._

_\--_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FUCKEN LISTEN TO THE LINK MOTHERFUCKERS THIS IS PVRIS. LYNN GUNNULFSEN IS HOT AS SHIT AND HER VOICE IS LIKE ANGEL VOMIT.
> 
> DAENA OUT. *drops mic*


	10. "Inherit the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Listen-[(Tom Day and Monsoonsiren- We Watched the Clouds Form Shapes)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fpWho_Fcrc)
> 
>    
>  _Leave it all alone, or you'll bleed too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: genetalia mutilation, self harm, homophobia, homophobic slurs, gun shots, abandonment, and death.  
> They are only small mentions, but please take care.
> 
> ( **Author's request:** If you can, please spend four and a half minutes listening to this song. Take your time and just relax and concentrate on it. This just sets it up for me, and even though this song is so simple and soft, every emotion I put into this just comes out through this song. So please take your time, enjoy this, and get as much out of it as I did.)

Sasha opens the door to find Mikasa standing on the doorstep, wrapped in a thick black coat that looks too larger for her. It’s raining, the short road outside puddling and slippery with grey rain that slashes across the black brick, turning the drains into choking messes. She raises an eyebrow, letting her eyes wander up the thin, huddled body in front of her, skin pale, eyes downcast; and immediately knows something is wrong.

“My gawd Mikasa y’alright?” Sasha swings the door open, stepping aside to let the walker in. Down the hall she can hear Connie, her cousin, running around and following the sound of a ball bouncing against the parquet floor.

Mikasa steps inside, muttering a quick thanks and breathing deeply into the warmth of the house. The brown of the floor, the soft yellow lighting and the photos that fill up every space make this house feel more like a home than her own does. From the door to the kitchen at the end of the hall the right wall is filled with odd and beautiful frames in one hundred shapes and sprinkled with everything from shells to blue glass; starting early, a younger, happier Sasha gripping her screaming baby cousin tight; until the end where she knows there a few rare pictures of him in the hospital, and in between holidays and first days and first meetings and many ends.

She swallows, watching as Sasha sits up on the vanity unit, barely looking as though it can support its own weight, let alone hers too.

“I’m okay. It’s just been…” She sighs, not looking at Sasha’s worried frown but to the reflection of her chestnut hair behind. “Quiet.”

Sasha purses her lips but nods her head anyway, looking as though she wants to speak but cannot find what to do next except hold the silence and let it bring its own conclusion.

It was that moment Connie poked his head from out of the living room and smiled brightly.

“Yo,” he nods; gappy teeth poked with his tongue, making him look younger than his frozen fourteen years. He’s a short lad, shaven bald and unhealthily framed, but he is more alive now than before his death, the energy in him strong and vibrant and ready to do anything he couldn’t before. Connie shifts himself from out of the doorframe and into the hall, rubber ball about the size of a gobstopper bouncing in his pale blue hand, fingernails bent the wrong way from sickening malnourishment.

Sasha drags her head to the side, pulling him closer with a snapping finger. “Get ‘ere y’ lump an’ say hey prop’ar.”

“Hey pro’aar.” He mocks her high Essex twang with a smirk. Mikasa feels the grin she so misses fall onto her lips.

“Hey Con, how you been doing?”

He complacently nods. “A’right. Tried to contact the dead yesterday.” His face is almost serious, but Sasha seems to notice the twitch of a lie in his dipped cheeks.

 “Don’t joke.” Her hand pats his shoulder. “He thinks he can talk t’ dead people now.”

“I so can, look.” His head flips to Mikasa, muddy brown eyes filled with contact lenses that look so much darker than the shining hazel that had previously filled them. And yet still mischievous. He nods a hello again, raising a hand to wave at Mikasa. “Hey there.”

Connie earns himself a dull smack around the head, both women lightly laughing at him.

“Ge’ upstairs y’ lit’le shit before I hit y’ up there.” The only living body in the room smiles at the boy, gaze moving to the stairs. Her nature, calm and bright, seems to direct Connie in the way his parents never did, the comfort of her playful words something Mikasa realises he still needs it— and she needs it too.

Comfort is long lost in her home. Only when Eren walked out did she realise how cold her life was, how dead everything she touches becomes. From day one she saw it, the fear rising in the back of his mind. But now she knows it is too late to rectify it, to do what she should have done and talked about something new rather than let herself and him play back the last few years, and then drink it back up bitterly. If only she had not been glad to be with him, to know that he is alive… that was all she wanted; for his life to appear untouched.

It is just a shame, she thinks, that she never noticed what lay underneath.

Wet lips smack against each other, Sasha chewing on her own tongue “Somethin’s up, right?” But Mikasa cannot answer. Her words are stuck tight in her chest, and Sasha seems to notice, jumping down from the vanity unit alongside its quick protest, and moved quickly to the back of the house, the kitchen. “I’ll make me a coffee an’ we can talk, ‘kay hun?”

“Yeah,” Mikasa sighs. Her head twists to the right as she follows her friend, the pictures steadily getting better, the frames wilder. Sasha had pointed out to her more than once in the past her favourite, high up where a younger and more boisterous Connie could not grab the streaming wind chimes hanging from the frame and pull the whole thing down.

The kitchen is just as she remembers it. The cupboards are still without doors, the table in the centre of the room still splattered with green and red hand prints from many years ago, the chairs a mixture of skip-rescued high backs and a few hand-me-downs. As always, the linoleum floor looks as though it is ready to fall apart, muddy footprints around the door to the tiny back garden in the same places as they always were. It is if as though nothing could change the room—like a time capsule whatever remains within, whatever the past holds returns and infects when it rises again, a momentum of a different time. Not always a better time.

A gun sits on the sideboard next to a fresh-looking dead rabbit on a wooden chopping board, half skinned. That is a feature she has never seen before, along with the large bow and tied pack of arrows leaning against the wall.

“Make y’self at home.” Sasha has already taken up her position over a kettle, reaching into an almost empty cupboard to find a tin. She pulls it out, strain in her breathing, but pulls it down and opens it anyway. Mikasa pulls out a wooden chair and puts herself down in it. She fumbles with the zip of the jacket before pulling it off. Sasha watches from the corner of her eye. “I were gonna call you over act’shally, but the council‘re plannin’ to cut my fundin’ and switch me t’ a bungalow’re som’mit. It’s been a fuckin’ ‘ard month. Even mentioned takin’ Con away. ‘m sorry I didn’ check up on ya sooner.”

“No, no it’s okay, it’s—“ She stops herself dead, running her hands along the yellow fingers flowered in front of her. “It’s been hard on everyone, I know…”

Sasha’s eyes are back on Mikasa, the mug in her hand cracked and looking ready to break under her fingers.

“I was going to ask if you’ve seen Eren at the base?” The walker’s voice is quiet, slightly higher than normal and ready to crack under the weight of those words. Sasha widens her eyes, shifts the pony tail high on her head from side to side and just… stares. Stares as though she could read everything Mikasa is swirling with, watch the actions and the loneliness play out in the way pale shoulders tense and short, bloodless nails grip to the wood of the table.

 Sasha settles onto the chair closest to her, a bright red, plastic monstrosity. “I don’ work with ‘im anymore. I’m still there, but I got downgraded, t’ kitchen status.” Her voice is low, she lifts the mug to her lips and swallows it. “In December we were, uh, we were doin’ a job down Dagenham and Redbridge way, findin’ a bloke what takes untreated an’ sells ‘em on for sex, gives ‘em a fuck ton of injecctions an’ asks for money. Like a necrophilia pimp. Anyway, the place were loaded, an’ we stepped in thinkin’ we were in a warehouse’re som’mit. I got shot, right lung.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. Fuck’s right.” Sasha laughs, the sound wheezy. She leans back in her chair, lifting her thick hoodie up to reveal a dangerous scar; a hole just under the uncupped breast, a line running through it. “Had to take som’a it out, infection. I’m livin’ off’a gas now, got one downstairs’n case I get puffy. Sleep in the livin’ room.”

Mikasa feels guilt with the new revelation. The whole room shivers before her eyes with s strange new tension. She swallows nothing, Sasha lifting the cup to her own lips. “I’m sorry.”

“I know, everyone is. But I’m alive an’ I’m still kickin’ ‘round.” There is some bitterness in her tone. It is understandable. But with a quick sigh that changes the aura of the room from a dirty orange to a vibrant yellow, Sasha smiles wide and familiar. Here is the home Mikasa knows in her friend. “Now stop fuckin’ distactin’ me. Eren, yeah?”

“Yeah. He left Saturday. Hasn’t been back home.”

Sasha catches the sadness, stores it carefully. “Mika, that’s five days he’s been gone, an’ he’s not seen ya once?” The walker shakes her head. “God, w’ot a li’tle shit.” Sasha finishes off their mug, putting it on the table with a slam. “But yeah, I have seen ‘im abou’. Wen’ down Tuesday t’ sort some medicals with ‘anji… or well, not _seen_ seen ‘im, but heard a rumour.”

A sigh. “Hanji.” They both know it.

Sasha nods. Her eyebrow rises, lip following in a smirk of uncertain knowledge. She leans over the table. “Well, they told me tha’ they’re getting’ rid of all the patients they’re keepin’ in for Gove’ment. Levi asked Eren t’ take one an’ it ended in a black eye. The bastard deserved it.”

“Levi?”

“No, Eren.” Sasha laughs but stops short. The brown gaze hardens. “Le’s jes’ say tha’ Levi got int’a some shit after you… passed. It ended pre’ty badly, an’ he’s been battlin’ with it since. Long story short, ask ‘im yerself if ya want t’ know, but we don’ poke at it. We’ve all got shit we don’ wan’na talk ‘bout now.”

“I get that.” Mikasa looks to the prints on the table. Sasha knows that she is silently asking for her to continue, too deep inside her own mind to say what doesn’t have to be said.

“Anyway, I heard tha’ Levi asked ‘im to take on another person since ‘e ‘s dealin’ with ‘em down at the base, an’ Eren went _nuts._ Star’ed sayin’ shit. Levi weren’t havin’ it an’ knocked ‘im a new one.” Sasha raises her hands one by one and presses her left palm to her right thumb, cracking the knuckle before doing the same to the left. She rolls her shoulders. “Anyway, Jean’s taken it now. The others’ve gone to community officers, a few palmed of on people who’d take ‘em for a bit a’ money.” She shrugs her shoulders. “Strange thing is, Jean’s been on a bender ‘bout hatin’ walkers since they star’ed comin’ back. But ‘anji mentioned tha’ he’s got real close to one of ‘em, and tha—“

Mikasa hits her hands to the table, her newly blue eyes shining. Eren had told her about this, about how Jean had suddenly grown to like Marco, grow close to him despite his reasons to never trust one again. “He’s got Marco?!”

Sasha raises her arms. “I- I dunno if it were called ‘Marco’ or what. Jes’ that ‘e’s taken one.” She lowers them slowly, her voice becomes softer. “But we’re driftin’.”

“I know.”

Mikasa keeps herself quiet for a few moments, reaching both of her hands into her lap, pulling the silver ring from her finger and twisting it around. Sasha sees the head dipped low, and immediately knows that despite Mikasa wanting to talk, she cannot find the words.

“Wha’re y’ holdin’?” she tries patience. Mikasa’s hands flinch. Her face stays still. “Can I see it?”

The whole situation feels as though she is trying to coax a small child to hand over the last crayon, but ‘softly-softly’ works best no matter how old a person becomes.

It is Mikasa who eventually gives in. Her hands go to sit in a hugged clasp on the table, a home in the centre for what lies inside.

Sasha gulps, stepping from her chair and sitting instead closer to Mikasa. She leans out, reaching to the light, slightly grey hands and tentatively touches the cool flesh. “You’ll let me see, right?”

But instead of answering, Mikasa flings her palms apart. The ring swings from one hand to another before settling on her fingertips with a quick spin. Sasha goes to pick it up. The hands twitch. Reality settles.

“I’m fuckin’ gonna shoot tha’ boy.” Sasha pulls her hands away and cracks her knuckles. She stares long and hard at the ring on the cold grey skin. Her lip twitches. “I’m gon’ kill the bastard.”

Mikasa exhales. “That’s my job.”

“Well…” The living woman breathes a mean laugh and looks up to the walker. “If y’ need back-up, I’m ace with a bow. I’ll shoo’ it right through ‘is bastard eye.” The two women smile at each other, their lost comradery reforming between them, the bonds hardening, framed with wood and metal. “ ‘e deserves it, the fuck.”

“Trust me. I’m pissed. And when I get my hands on him he’s gon’na… Fuck, he’s dead, he’s so dead.”

“Good.” Sasha’s warm brown eyes soften into Mikasa’s. Her delicate cheeks, gentle smile, all combine in one instant and she is radiant—motherly and powerful. “Don’t take it,” she hisses, unblinking, “don’t take his shit. You stand up f’ y’self, y’ hear? If y’ need somewhere t’ stay, I’m here, if y’ need help, I’m here. Just don’t let the bigots win. Don’t let nobody tell you that you ain’t worth livin’. You’re alive as me, ‘kay? You deserve it, so do good, do what’s right… for all of us.” Sasha stands up and pats Mikasa firmly on the shoulder. “’m on your side more than y’ might think. An’ there are others tha’ think the same way. Remember that.”

 

\--

_Why is the world so terrifying? Why does it make me want to cry at every opportunity, everything I do judged and analysed until my life has no meaning? Is there something I’ve done to deserve the life I’m living, that everyone else is living? When did the world get so tough that just getting up and leaving the same room I have not moved from in days seems impossible?_

_My life, the world I live in… it has changed. My life has moved on in ways I could never have imagined they would._

_Because it hasn’t._

_My life has not changed; my body, my mind—they are frozen in time, and I see the world moving around me, revolving on its axis and repeating just as life should, moving and evolving just as the world should do. The people move, the people migrate. The people change._

_But I am not the people. I am the outsider, the alien that stands and watches from an invisible place how the people I cannot connect to go about their fresh lives. Whilst I am stale. I am stale, and cold, and grounded to the earth by right, unable to be lifted into the sky and left to burn and be free._

_Because I am dead. I am a time capsule to be left and untouched, and I am old. I do not belong._

_No more, no longer._

_\--_

He goes last into the rows of showers, the last few eyes on him as he moves through the rows and to the corner of the room, secluded from the small blonde woman and an older man with an arm missing. The water is only tepid, but it still feels like heaven against his skin, the distant patter of water on the floor, against his skin feels like the rain he has missed for so long. If he closes his eye he can almost imagine watching the bay close to his home and how it looks in the rain. The water bounces with the two types of the same element, circles and splashes a new droplet before that too complies with gravity and settles in the endless body once more.

If he thinks hard he sees the fields of lush grass, the small forest in the distance where he had walked the family dog with Armin when they were just kids, finding mushrooms and strangely coloured rocks that they could never crack open between the towering trunks and morning-dew moss.

He runs his hands through his hair, wetting it before running soap through the greasy mess. Three months wash down the drain, and Marco is almost ready to forgive what has happened. A staple falls out when he rubs the acidic soap across the short shaven part of his hair. He searches for a moment to find where it has come from, but finds no source. He drops it into the drain below and watches it float away.

Marco takes a long time. Washing everything three times takes a toll on the temperature of the water, the flow, but even as the last few people leave he does not move. Instead he pretends that his shoulders are knotted and sore from sitting in a chair all day, and keeps his head low to wash away the tension like another layer of dirt. The water is gone when he finishes. He turns off the empty faucet and steps from the raised grill platform and onto the tiled floor with a wet tap. He takes the towel and rubs himself down quickly, enjoying the friction of something clean against his skin. He is careful around his arm and face, patting instead of rubbing the skin raw. But by the end he feels like a new person, not a PDS sufferer.

His head is high as he leaves the showers.

“Where are you going after this Marco?” Krista, a familiar face in the crowd, slides a shirt over her head as she talks. She does not face him, but looks to the mirror far ahead of her.

None of them have any shame now; that is what this place has taught them. Marco takes the towel from around his waist, putting it down without and fuss before picking up a similar shirt on his own pile and pulling it down. “One of t’ officers. How about you?”

“A community officer in Ipswich. She seems nice, came to talk to me earlier.” She picks up a small round tub and a box, walking close to the mirror. She places her items down, leans over the sink, and looks at her reflection in close detail. “I think she secretly supports the ULA.”

“I have her too,” another man pipes up. His black hair is short, the contacts in his eyes too dark for the complexion pasted a few shades too light, "Then again, I head that a lot of the community officers are supporters. At least they support our rights… unlike the fucking Victus party.”

“Ugh, fuck them,” another woman pipes up. “You be careful though Marco. I’m not so sure everyone here’s so liberal about us.”

He tugs the boxers up, looking over his shoulder to the woman. “Jean’s not a bad man. I think most of the living’re more scared than anyt’ing.”

Krista turns sharply. Her blonde hair swings against her face, half of it a healthy pallor, the other still pale and almost luminous in the blue light, and both tense with fury. “Jean, the one who helped kill Ymir? That Jean?”

“He’s torn up about that… he’s torn up about a lot of things.”

Krista shakes her head. “It doesn’t excuse what he did.” Her voice is hoarse.

Marco sighs. “No. I’m not defending what he did, I just know he regrets it.”

The woman snorts, pulling the plastic bag filled with her clothes over her shoulder. “He told you that himself?” she smarms.

“Didn’t need te,” Marco raises his eyebrow at her, right, empty eye facing her. “I can read ever’t’ing he does. I was a  councillor, y’know, before this.” He turns back to the wall, adjusting the draw-strings of the grey tracksuit pants as he talks, tone patient. “He’s a very guilty man, but he knows it, and I don’t mind spending time wit’ him. He’s honest, and I can respect that.”

“Hm,” the man snorts, sitting on the bench opposite Marco to tie the laces off his boots. “Not sure I agree.”

“You don’t have te. You’re not t’ one he’s legally in charge’f.” He turns to the few people still in the room. In some way they all look back; in the reflection of glass, out of the corner of their eye, direct stares. “I trust ‘m. I trust that on his own will he wouldn’t hurt me, and that I would do t’ same. We’ve all been under God’s hand f’ some time, and we’ve all done things we regret. This is our lesson, t’ learn and trust again, regardless of the past; t’ pray for all ‘f you’s safety and move on without prejudice or revenge in our hearts. I want t’ believe in that.”

Krista laughs shortly by the carbon copy reflection. Her eyes are newly blue and wide, and they seem to smile with innocence, and yet with a new fire burning within them. “Well said…” she smiles into the mirror. “I don’t believe in it, but you said it right.”

“Same,” the man adds.

“Same,” the woman follows. Her eyes move to the ground. “I wish I did though. I wish everyone did.”

“The world would be easier.” Krista’s voice is low. She picks up the few items from the sink and takes them back to her bag. The room watches her, observe the new strength she has gained after Ymir’s execution. The sweet woman has been turned terrifyingly powerful with time and pain, Marco detects, but she needs it. Her strength is raw and headstrong with just the right amount of ambition to change what she wants to change, to accomplish what will make her life easier to bear. She swings the bag fill of the few possessions she owns over her shoulder, looking to the man and then to Marco. “But that’s not how the world works. If the world was easy then there would be nothing worth living for. I’d rather fight and know that my life has meaning than die and be comfortable.” She begins to head out of the door, the man following close behind. The guard waits for them both, but as they are just about to leave she turns and gives them one last smile on her damaged face. “You take care of yourselves.”

“You too Krista,” Marco smiles. The woman repeats it, offering a small wave to the duo as they exit the room.

The woman picks her own bag up and moves to the mirror. Her own blue eyes are done and she stares at them intently. They stand out from her brown hair, perhaps too light for her, but she seems happy and reflective. Marco pulls on his own boots, unsure of how he will bring himself to do the cover-up and contacts on his own.

“I can’t believe I look so alive…” the woman talks under her breath. And then she snaps. Her head violently shakes and she lifts her hands up to her hair and pulls at it for a few moments. Her hands stream her face.

Then, she is heading out, bag dragging the floor and body set straight to the outside world without a second glance to the only walker left in the room.

Marco sighs as she leaves. He picks up the cover-up in shade 24 and the brown contacts and places them on his lap. He needs to put them on, but his reflection scares him. The man that would greet his every movement is not him; it is a phantasm, an illusion of the eye. Synchronisation between the pair is paramount. Marco hates how the walker moved with him, hates what he saw the first and only time he let his identity fall into a cataclysmic crisis.

With one item in each hand he stands and heads to the mirror. But just before he reaches where he can see his reflection he stops himself. He looks up to it, his own body not there, but another at the door.

Jean, for the first time in an actual tan uniform, red beret cap slung low over his head and wings pasted oddly to the front, is something comforting. The air of authority is catching, a new element in the list of many Marco has had to figure out over the days. Some sadness is in his eyes, but also a sweet calm in equal parts of companionship and understanding.

“Not ready yet then.” He says, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe. Marco just shakes his head. “You really need the make-up. I’ve got no car, so we’re walking.”

“It’s okay t’ walk?” Marco asks.

Jean just smirks. “Not without cover-up. There’re still some people who think the HVF are the best thing on this earth.” His footfall is heavy as he walks, the swaying body the effect of tamed arms. He lumbers over with purpose, completely in control of every movement he makes; from the gentle nod of his head as his heel echoes across tile, to the lazy sway in his hip. Marco watches him with purpose. He falls back into the routine of looking, finding. What he discovers in the small space is someone falling apart but holding it together with mediocre acting.

Perhaps it is pity welling in his chest. But there is something, and it is strong, and willing to be spoken. The time is not right.

“I… I was going t’ put in on now but,” Marco shakes the thought of his own face—the monster—looking back into his own. He dusts it from his shoulders, lets it slide down his arms and back and onto the ground and through his fingertips like ask. “I don’t really want te.”

“Hm.” The deep hum bounces.

The white lights are too bright.

The mirror stares back at him. Ochre glints. The same movement, the sway of wind through trees, ruffles through Jean’s skin. The uniform does things; the uniform is another skin that allows a rough ego to coat everything he owns. The drums of war beat with his heart. He is the definition of bellicose.

“Sit.” Jean grips the pot in Marco’s hand. His thin fingers graze over cold ones and he does not flinch. Instead he takes the small, slow, shifting, silent, soft, swirling, smoking, sighing step.

His eyes. They fall like the sun from the sky.

And then in an instant the pot is gone from Marco’s grasp and the hand that holds it points to the line of sinks. “Sit.”

“But what if I see—“

“Then close your eyes, walk backwards. I’m not kneeling on this floor.” The lopsided grin is just a loose command.

Marco swallows the nervous bile. The air moves out around him and with it his eyelid shuts over what is left of his vision, and he is blind once more.

It is not something he tells. The darkness scares him. Never, ever as a child did it. Even as a young kid when his parents had worked in Dublin through the riots when he was down south. Even in the darkness. When he spend his young summers with a grandmother over an oily fish and chips shop he never opened the door onto the illuminated landing for the reassurance that there was still something similar to magic connecting the world in a lethal glow. In fact he would bring the blankets far over his head and allow his breath to heat the sheets to almost unpleasant levels. The air would have nothing to breathe but he found the darkness a comfort. When the world does not exist before your eyes, does it exist at all?

A young Marco never thought so.

As a man, though. He believes now that the world goes on even when the mind no longer realises it. He knows that even though he is in sleep or death the world spins and people still burn forests and cheat each other out of money as though it is going out of style.

Marco feels grown. Adulthood always a silly prospect to him, the thought of believing in what should be obvious feels as though he is admitting that the world could never suffer from a bad case of imagination. A dark life extends on beyond his skin. The world is darker when he can no longer flood it with light. Death happens in darkness; not magic, not the stars and the moon. When a world goes dark it ends with nothing. Nothing cannot be seen.

Nothing is dark. Death is darkest of all; the ultimate definition of nothingness.

And so closing his eye, letting the only source of his connection with the world, feels as though he is dying all over again. Even as he stretches his arms in front of him only to find something bump against his palms and then grip them tight in a forward tug. His head sways in the darkness. The world moves around him and he sees none of it, letting everything happen without knowing what is going on.

His legs hit something and the grip on Marco’s hands is released. He uses them, lowering them down to haul himself up onto the sink counter as his eyes open and the world is suddenly awoken from night. In front of him is the room, and Jean. He is holding the pot with its lid open and tucked under his arm. Two fingers scoop into the dark paste and then lift it up, idolising the disgusting viscosity of the awful stuff.

Jean puts the pot down on the side beside Marco, gracelessly trying to grab the lid and put it down next to it. He glances at Marco for a second before wiping the majority of the cover-up onto the back of his left hand and rubbing what is left between his thumb and index finger.

“What’re y’ doing?” Marco questions.

Jean only shrugs his shoulders and idly dabs at the liquid. “What d’you think? You were being too slow.”

“But that doesn’t mean tha… oh my God Jean. You’re not doing my make-up.”

“What?” He almost seems shocked, insulted. A daub of the dark on his light skin sticks up on the tip of his finger as he raises is. “Don’t think I can do it?”

“I don’t want ye to! I can do it myself.” Marco huffs. “You’re also supposed to put the contacts in first.”

“Oh.” Jean swallows thickly. “You can do that right?”

Marco nods. He opens the box in his hands, pulling out a plastic and metal tray bobbing with the pods of saline and membrane. Eyes follow his movement as he carefully snaps a pair from the rows and slips the majority back in before peeling back the fresh-foil. His right hand puts the box next to his hip. The other holds the thin tray and carefully tries to keep the salty water inside.

With only one eye it takes a moment for Marco to get to grips with the small distance, grabbing the plastic almost clumsily and adjusting it on the tip of his finger as he had been shown. He feels lucky for how round his eyes have always seemed, and when he carefully pries his eyelids apart with his right hand and somehow after just one go manages to get it in.

He blinks rapidly a few times then rolls his eye around with it open. It has been a time since he had last put one in and it was still an unusual feeling, the vision just tinted with a hint of black around the edges. Jean observes him loosely.

“You look different with it in.” He coughs at the end of the sentence and once again concentrates hard on the dollop on his hand. “Now do you want me to do this or what?”

“And I can’t do it myself because…”

“Because if you come out of this lookin’ like fucking Katie Price I’m leaving you here and Hanji can have you.” The cocky smile returns with a flick. The blob is strangled between his thumb and index finger, rubbing circles between the two and the pad on the tip of his middle finger. He takes a step closer. Marco begins to move his head away from the encroaching fingers but stops when he realises that they are too quick, the eyesight not catching up fast enough to deal with this distance. For some reason he inhales when the fingers touch his cheek lightly, perhaps expecting something worse.

All Jean does is swipe his fingers up along the cheekbone of Marco’s face. It leaves a wet streak waiting to be daubed in.

“Why did you move?!” Jean chastises, his eyebrows furrowing. “Stay still.”

The hand reaches back up to Marco’s face. In a panic he grabs the wrist with one hand, clenching his jaw and glaring at Jean with all he has. “I don’t need ye t’ do it for me.” Childish anger blooms in his chest.

Underneath his fingers, Marco feels Jean tense. His eyes move from shining to dead again, a thick swallow travel down his throat. Jean tugs his hand away lightly and Marco lets him slip from his grasp. He sniffs loudly, nodding once before taking a firm step back and taking Marco’s hand, rubbing the back of his own across the palm to exchange the gloop.

“Fine.” He bites, moving swiftly over to a sink to wash whatever remains from his hands. He says nothing more when he turns off the tap and sits on a far bench with his arms crossed, allowing the frigid attitude to stew.

Marco just bites back the discomfort of the grey anger and rubs his palms together. The wet slap against his cheeks does not drown out the feeling of ghostly fingers running along the cheekbone of his right cheek, and he rubs his hands and fingers all over his face, in every crevice until the feeling is brushed away and suffocated beneath the stifling paste.

Jean sits just outside of his field of vision. Somehow, though, he can feel his eyes momentarily piercing him. It is somewhat unnerving; but not in a bad way. They sit and purvey the scene, what needs to be done, what hasn’t been completed. With every circle Marco casts into his skin he can feel how Jean is itching to do it better, to improve it and make it perfect.

Three minutes past before Jean seems as if he can take no more. He stands, groaning loudly and stomping his way back over to where he is once again in the light.

“Fucking stop,” he scolds, arms still crossed, “you look ridiculous.”

There is no point for an argument. How can Marco tell when he is not willing to see himself? He just looks to the strangely grown man chewing his lower lip in impatience and snuffling a cold every few seconds. Marco sighs at the sight. He sits himself back slightly, pulling his hands down from his face and giving up any control.

“Fine. You do it if y’ t’ink y’ can do any better.”

Jean snorts. “ ‘f course I can, that’s what little sisters do to… never mind. Just—“ He uncrosses his arms, shakes his wrists through and turns his head in a circle, the bones in his neck cracking. “Don’t be a prick about it. This town still ain’t the most friendly. It’s semi-rural, lots of Human Volunteer Force supporters, an’ I want to get back home without getting shot at.” Marco’s chin is roughly taken into Jean’s hand. He stares forward. Jean looks right back. “Get it over and done with, ‘kay?”

Marco bobs his head once, and suddenly Jean’s hands are a flurry. Sometimes he feels as though his skin might be pulled from his bones with the force of the rough strokes into his hairline, along his jaw and down the neck he had never thought to touch. Yet around his nose, his eyes, his lips… his touch is barely a breeze. He uses the tip of his ring finger to rub small circles into the defined and deep cupid’s bow, the same finger to hold around his eyelid and tear duct with the care Marco could never expect from someone dressed in military uniform and topped with a blood red.

He thinks.

There was something there, and in the past, that he had known not to touch. But now was not the time to hold secrets.

“Your sister,” Marco croaks around the fingers dabbing down the sides of his nose. Nothing else needs to be said. Jean sighs slowly.

“She’s dead. Amilie, ‘ve mentioned her before.”

Marco remembers the conversation in his distant past, the first day they had met. He swallows.

“It’s fine though. ‘m getting ‘round it, it’s easier now than back when.” Fingers press lightly against Marco’s right cheek, and he turns to the left. He cannot see Jean over his nose, but his mouth is slung open and ready to talk. He swipes up and onto Marco’s ear, blending in the cover-up further. “She was a good kid, it’s nice to remember that. Things… like this, it just reminds me of her.”

“Hm?” Marco questions. His head is flipped the other way, the same process of blending the bright liquid over his dull skin continuing.

Jean nods in front of him. “Used to do this for her sometimes. She sucked at it, and mum never wore make-up.” His low laugh seems to match the swirling pace of his finger. “I had a weird stage when I first came out, like, it was early two thousands, and everyone expected me to dress like Eddie Izzard, red lipstick and eyeliner. That didn’t last long but I got pretty good.” Eyes flicker up from the delicate work being done just behind Marco’s ear. “That’s the reason I dealt with you on the first day, by the way.”

“I thought you drew the short straw.”

Jean’s laugh grows, almost restrained. He steps back for a moment. “It’s the military. They take advantage of whatever they can.” His eyebrow raises as he searches Marco’s face. “Stand up, I need to get to the back of your neck.”

He does as Jean says; plonking his feet squarely onto the floor. Behind him, Jean opens the tub again, and in a hurried moment his fingers are dabbing the cover-up into his skin again.

“You could’ve said no.”

“I could’ve, but I just got used to being called the group’s fag. I don’t really want pussy shoved in with that.” Fingernails scrape along the bold taper of Marco’s dark hair. “It’s duty. Everyone’s just here to be used.”

“It’s sad t’ believe that.”

“I suppose so.” Jean huffs. “But I’m used to giving and receiving by now. I owe my life to ‘em ten times over.” And then suddenly the tone of his voice changes. The edges of his words no longer stink of acrid smoke and hot flames. They cool and relax, shift to a pleasant swell of homely heat to encompass something low familiar. “Whoever thought broads were s’posed to be automatically good at with make-up was so wrong. First time Amilie tried she put concealer all over her face and ended up looking like a Tango ad. After that she decided that either I’d do it or she wouldn’t bother.” He pulls back the shirt Marco wears, running his warm hands along the top of his spine, across his shoulders. It feels familiar and yet there is nothing to it—a simple precaution just in case the shirt rides. But Jean stays silent as he does it. More companionable than anything, it fills the empty room. “You’re done.” He pats the skin. “Hanji said to give you the eye patch back as well.” He shuffles after a few moments, and rustles around in the pocket of his uniform, coming out with a vaguely familiar black patch. He drops it into Marco’s hand and steps to face him.

They drop the conversation with it.

Marco barely notices how Jean’s expression changes in front of him. Nothing is noticeable when he is so focused on removing the one part of himself he cannot bring back to how it was. Jean looks in awe. He says nothing.

“When’re we going?” Marco asks, looping the bow one final time behind his head.

Looking to Jean means seeing him rub at the traces of dark that stain his hands like golden ash. Fingernails dig it out from underneath other fingernails, the future lines preceding him trenches. He takes a hard gulp of air. “When you’re done. I need to wash off.” Besides him the sink runs and water heats up fast Jean scrubs harshly. “I, uh, I'm not sure how to say this…” Underneath the stream of water, he cricks his knuckles, “but, I did a good job.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Jean smiles down at his foamed hands. “’part from the missing eye, you ain’t a bad looking bloke.”

The cover up feels thick when he smiles. Like a second skin it moulds to him, the words spreading new thoughts in his head. The encouragement makes him want to risk it, and he almost dares. His blind side twists halfway to the mirror, Jean in the corner of his eye. The soldier washes his hands calmly, under his eyebrows gives Marco a questioning look.

_You gonna look?_

“I don’t lie.” Hazel eyes move back to the stream of burnt orange fading in the water. “If I say you don’t look like shit, you don’t. Trust me on that one.”

But it feels next to impossible. Just as every first step, the work seems the most difficult, the leap the most treacherous. To move those few inches seems like halfway across the world and it is impossibly scary. He can’t; he wants to but he can’t. The layers of fakery and lies on his skin cover like ash what hides underneath, forgetting the damage to a place body in the burst of black. Marco is not sure if it will ever be enough— but the way Jean’s eyes never quite settle on him, never quite judge or push… they slink. Their sly encouragement is testing on Marco’s will.

_You gonna look?_

Because he wants to. Perhaps to forget, maybe to pretend. He wants to. He needs to take that first step, race to the finish line of his own reflection, and the support is strong, if small.

 The water shuts off, Jean wandering to grab paper towels and roughly dry his hands with them. He doesn’t look at Marco, not with his eyes. His presence is pushing.

So he looks.

There is a face he recognises from everyone other than himself.

The eye of his father. The same as his, the regularity and the earth. Fields, molehills and mountains. Bark and the darkness on an autumn evening. Protected by black lashes standing like guards, thin eyebrow high in shock, perhaps surprise.

A face like his mother’s. Same nose with the line across the centre where it seems to almost comically become rounder and softer. A soft and slightly square jawline, yet perhaps feminine in certain respects.  But even. A cracked bottom lip smudged into life, a top lip just dark enough to mismatch the skin above.  Cheekbones blended neatly and evenly.

Hair somewhere between the two. Just as dark as he remembers, curled at the ends just enough for Marco to remind him of a high bun perched on a familiar head, strands falling in pin-curled streams to the shoulders and behind ears dripping with gifted stones. The style is out of place, and the only thing he recognises as his own is sorted between his fingers until the parting straight down the centre is even and the cleanliness apparent. 

Maroc feels normal.

“See?” Jean breathes out the words. Maybe he means it to be tender, but it sounds tired. In the mirror behind Marco he stands and folds his arms. “I told you it wasn’t bad.”

“You’re a horrible man.” He laughs, shaking his head. “You’re… you’re terrible. Making me believe…” Marco swallows back the feeling of sadness in his throat. The smile on his lips tried to fight against the gravity threatening his happiness. His jaw quivers. “You’re not allowed t’ make me forget.”

“I haven’t done anything.”

“You said you didn’t lie! You… what have you…” And Marco forces his eyes closed so tightly that his vision dances with bursts of grey and white. Breathy sobs force through his lips, and he covers his mouth and nose with his hand, the air rushing in and out intensified and blown up in one thousand different ways.

He misses the tears he had felt fall. He wants them back. But they do not come. A hand, in place, comes to rub against his back. It moves between his shoulder blades, down his spine and up along his shoulders in a warm arch. Marco leans back into the feeling of comfort, twists himself into it; the hold, the grasp.

Jean’s shoulder is so close, a place to let everything go. And he does. Marco holds his hands to his chest and beats them with no movement against the person he wants to thank and scream at all at once. He makes it better and worse, forgetting and remembering a constant cycle that does not stop until he can no longer keep his eyes open and the hands holding Marco tight to his warmth and a steadily beating heart stop pacing hold still, fingers gripping.

“You are an idiot.”

Marco buries his nose into Jean’s shoulder, breathing thick and warm air as fingers pull through is hair and tangle it. The pound of a beating heart becomes irregular with panting breath. Jean keeps Marco close, not quite willing to let go before he is absolutely sure… of what he does not know.

An apology, maybe. Knowing that at home—Marco’s new home—is a folder, an inch thick, with a familiar name on it.

Jean hasn’t looked yet but he knows. He’s seen three in the space of a year and he feels that this is just the same. The past is crashing down on Marco. He can see it, saw it. In his shaking the pain remains strong and steady, the hands on his chest clawing for respite not yet ready to come. Jean wants to give it; he does, he really does, but he is not sure of how much he can give of himself to relieve the past.

They hold each other for a while and wallow in the long gone and the future ahead where the world waits and the past comes back to haunt those who live through the rubble and smoke. Marco dives into the comfort of someone trying to understand. Jean holds on to what he can of someone familiat. Both are needed and wanted; unsure of what to do, where to go but back to a small terraced house by a graveyard ten minutes away. Jean has Marco moving, and Marco has Jean standing still.

And when they decide that even though they have to stop and leave the almost empty base, they stay close, and on the journey home Jean admits to the file, and to being unsure of what to do next apart from be pessimistic of its content. He holds Marco in to his side with one arm and he pretends for the town that nothing has changed. This is just someone else, another regular person to walk with him through the streets. He pretends that this is not different. Even though his mind is telling him that it is, and Jean cannot escape how centred he feels standing next to someone that seems almost mythical beneath his humanity.

But Marco is already moving on. He has been, and only now in the freshly damp air and the late sunlight of a spring afternoon does he want to let go.

And in as many ways as he can, he does.

 

 

 

\--

_I don’t want to have to think about what I feel. For you._

\--

 

 

 

 

**AUTOPSY REPORT**

Autopsy: BPD112648689357

Autopsy authorised by: Dr. Richard McFadden for The Pale War Recovery Centre of The Republic of Ireland (PWRCRI)

Identified by: Driver’s license found in jacket worn by the deceased.

**Armin Francis Arlert (previously Ermen Francis Arlert)**

Rigor: Absent

Liver: Purple

Distribution: Anterior

Age: 23

Sex: Male, reproductively female seeking gender reassignment treatment before The Rising and Pale Wars

Length: 163 centimetres

Weight: 45kg

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Blond

Body: 12 degrees Celsius, room temperature

 

**Clothing:**

  1.         Black jacket, blood stained. Bullet hole; entry on right shoulder, exit right side of spine. Tear on collar. Zip broken.
  2.         Blue jumper, blood stained. Bullet holes: see jacket.
  3.         Grey shirt, blood stained, burnt. Bullet holes: see jacket. Right sleeve removed.
  4.         Blue denim jeans, blood stained, mud marks found along right side and buttocks. Button and zip broken.  Irregular tears to leg cuffs and knees, dirt composition found. Bullet holes; entry above left knee, left ankle, right hip.
  5.         Brown belt.
  6.         Black underwear briefs, blood stained. Bullet hole; entry on right hip.
  7.         Black socks.
  8.         Grey woollen socks.
  9.         Black boots.
  10.      Green gloves, blood stained.



**External Examination:**

Severely malnourished, ribs visible. Four bullet wounds: right shoulder, left knee, right hip, left ankle. Contusions to left arm and neck. Nose visibly recently broken, partially healed.  126 lacerations ranging between 2mm and 27 mms in length on upper-thighs on both legs, seemingly self-inflicted, partially healed. Multiple penetrating fragments—bullets visible in left ankle and right hip. Scarring and deformation of clitoris recent but healed.

**X-rays:**

Total body x-rays display multiple comminuted fractures to lower femur, patella, lower fibula, lower tibia, talus, pelvis, scapula as well as multiple anterior rib fractures to rib 2 on right side.

**History:**

Unknown. Found Outside St. Luke’s hospital by recovery team.

**Pathological Diagnosis:**

1)        Injuries to cranium:

  1.         Nose cartilage broken.



2)        Injuries to trunk:

  1.         9mm bullet to right shoulder.
  2.         Entry through right pectoral, through scalpula in a diagonal entry from above right.
  3.         Exit wound on right side of spine, emitting part of right lung, bullet missing.
  4.         9mm bullet to right hip.
  5.         Fracture to hip, bullet embedded.



3)        Injuries to appendages:

  1.         Small lacerations on thighs.
  2.         Contusions on arms, above elbow, wrists.
  3.         Entry wound above right knee, entry wound at the back of the leg, the exit wound to the front. Bulled missing.
  4.         Fracture of femur.
  5.         Fracture of patella.
  6.          All ligaments in knee torn.
  7.         Fibula fractured; partially splintered and externalised.
  8.         Tibia fractured.
  9.          Talus splintered, 9mm bullet embedded, protruding from heel, tearing Achilles’ heel.



4)        Toxicology:

  1.         Blood carboxyhaemoglobin levels less than 5%.
  2.         Blood and vitreous fluid negative for alcohols.
  3.         Blood negative for acidic, basic and neutral drugs.



**Cause of death:**

Blood loss caused by four bullet wounds from one or more 9mm calibre guns.

**Gross Description:**

Skin: Multiple lacerations and perforations with regular edges.

Pleura: 150ml blood right, small bone fragments recovered, mostly from spinal cord and ribs.

Peritoneum: 100ml blood, multiple bone fragments removed.

Heart. 285 grams. Normal size and shape, coronary arteries within normal limits. Single penetrating laceration to aortic root.

Aorta: Laceration of aortic root.

Lungs: 760 grams combined. Through bullet wound from left upper lobe to left middle lobe.

Lymph nodes: Within normal limits.

Liver: 1390 grams.

Pancreas: Usual external configuration and pale tan on cut section with the usual lobular architecture.

Adrenal glands: Within normal limits.

GI tract: Maxilla and mandible normal. The tongue has sustained no injury. The pharynx and oesophagus are unremarkable. The stomach is empty. The appendix is not present.

Kidneys: 280 grams combined. The capsules strip with ease. The cortical surface is smooth. The cortices are of normal thickness and the pyramids and collecting systems are unremarkable. There are no stones or focal lesions. The ureters are intact.

Bladder: Normal.

Genitalia: Healed lacerations to clitoris. Notable due to previous medical history. Professionally, would suggest that they have occurred in the past 2-3 months.

Brain and meninges: Brain intact, weighing 810 grams.

Skull: Normal.

Pelvis:  Comminuted fractures to right ilium.

Ribs: Perforations and fractures of anterior ribs.

Vertebrae:  Spineous process removed from upper thoracic region.

Extremities: damage done to left ankle, see x-rays. Right knee—see x-rays.

**Summary:**

This 23 year old white transgender male was shot four times by an unknown assailant/s and left to bleed out outside of St. Luke’s hospital for at least three days before he was recovered. No weapon was found at the scene.

**Cause of Death:**

Blood loss, possible hypothermia.

**Manner of Death:**

Effects of the Pale Wars.

**Body:**

From this date [24-12-2010] the body will be put in temporary cold storage for 31 days. Unless claimed, the body will be put in mass cremation and distributed onto a public memorial.

 

 

\--

_And that’s it. You’re gone. Dead. And I’m still here, still kicking._

_Did you deserve it? No. Never. But did I? Truthfully I think I would have the same answer._

_But am I upset?_

_Mortified, Armin. I’m devastated, you know? I can’t think of you gone. I… I CAN’T. But I have to, and that’s so damn hard. To think that somewhere in the world you’re resting forever and I’m still wandering around with my home so dubious and my existence just a fleck in the masses-- I can’t come back to you. We won’t meet again. That day… that day was our last and that is horrible, just… terrible. I can’t even remember the last thing I said to you…_

_Was it ‘I love you,’ or ‘Get the fuck out now!’?_

_And I have this sinking feeling, because I know deep down that I said the second one and yet I want so much to have said the first one. Even if I don’t feel the same way now I meant it then, because I did, I really did, and I still would do if things had never changed. But to know that, you… YOU, you perfect little bundle, you warrior, you damn magician— it was you who lived and almost got to the end, almost made it out of the other side and blossomed and did what you had to do; be strong, be brave. No matter what happens now, I’ll think of you and I will not be able to remember that day the same way. I can’t see you in the smoke and flames. I no longer worry that you were there. Because you weren’t, and you lived. Thrived. Way past me, in a world harsher than anything I’ve known._

_Be proud of that, because I am. I’m so proud of you. Wherever you are, be so, so fucking proud that you could do what I couldn’t. You stood on your own and you made it, Armin. You did it. You beat the world; you suffered from it and experienced it all and you survived._

_You are the man I could never hope to be. What you must have seen—God!— it must have been hard. And may He have mercy on your soul, may He take you and give you everything you ever deserved. See the world from ten thousand feet and enjoy it for all it is worth. You deserve it all, Armin, you really do. Take it, and enjoy what you deserve. Be proud of who you were, be proud of the strength I knew was there all along._

_I will always, always always ALWAYS love you. Not as I had before, but never any less._

_You inspire me. Every day._

_Codladh samh._

_\--_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, for any of you that read Stutter and saw the post that I took down rather quickly, I mentioned that after some stuff that is happening with me right now I decided that it was a good idea for me to take a step back from writing for a short while. However, I'm pretty shit at that. I've talked a lot about having this, and even if it can be a distraction, it's a welcome one. So whilst I'm still trying to get over a lot of things, I'm going to finish Waking Up before even committing myself to anything else. I'm not expecting more than five chapters before this is done so there is not much left to go. But from here on out is going to be a roller coaster.
> 
> So, this fic is coming off of planned hiatus, and the others are staying on for the foreseeable future. I'm ready for this one to come to a close now and I'm looking forward to concentrating on this.


End file.
